Some things don’t come back — hair follicles, love — but are old-time sports ready for a revival?

I wrote this in August 2006 but the subject is evergreen, as geezers like me still pine for old-time baseball, or tennis before the advent of graphite racquets with huge faces, or football before unrestricted substitution.

Over Labor Day weekend in Roxbury, New York, visitors and residents will enjoy a “Turn of the Century” experience that promises to be the perfect occasion to don that straw boater or wear dress whites one last time for the season. While festivity particulars include an appearance by the ubiquitous Jay Ungar and Molly Mason, my focus is predictably on the sporting story. In addition to the hometown Roxbury Nine, a highly competitive club that plays all summer long under the rules and equipment of 1884, Kirkside Park will host such vintage baseball antagonists as the Gothams and Mutuals, both of New York, the Atlantics of Brooklyn, and the Providence Grays. Some of these contestants will have been seasoned under earlier rules — those of 1864 (when a ball caught on a bounce was an out and a pitcher could not throw sidearm or overhand) or as late as the 1890s, when the game looked much as it does today, though a foul ball was still not chalked up as a strike.

Although the charm of the grand old game is that it appears to be the same as it ever was, or at least the same as in McKinley’s day, it has changed most radically in ways that are not to be found in the rulebook. Bigger and stronger athletes play in smaller ballparks with shrunken strike zones, endangering pitchers’ physiques and psyches and threatening their very species with extinction. Steroids, expansion, threatened contraction, greed … I could go on, and often enough have, so let’s stop kicking that can. Baseball today is still the game of our fathers and grandfathers, and its self-conscious archaism is a large part of its enduring charm.

There are those (baseball’s equivalent of the Amish) who believe the game today has gone so far in the wrong direction that it needs to go back to the future if it is to have one. Just give us baseball as it ought to be, and used to be, we graybeards wail. “Our” game may have changed in ways that are irreversible, in matters of style and scale and “monetization,” that cold-cash word for a cold-hard era. The playing of baseball is increasingly detached from watching it, as football and basketball have raced past the old ball game in terms of participants and spectators. Once boys dreamed of playing center field; now, playing fantasy baseball in preference to sandlot ball, they dream of being a real general manager buying and selling real players.

In a single generation we have moved from emulation to simulation.

In short, the things about today’s game that make those who love baseball grind their teeth are the things that have propelled vintage baseball to a popularity unimagined when it commenced at Old Bethpage Village back in 1980 as a living-museum demonstration. All these years later their players still host matches on the scenic grounds, only now they and the Meadow Muffins of the Ohio Village Historical Society — the second vintage baseball team, having commenced in 1981 — are joined in other locales by well over a hundred clubs playing by a variety of antique rules.

In 1985 Tom Heitz, then librarian at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, joined with some twenty-somethings at the New York State Historical Association to form the Leatherstocking Base Ball Club of Cooperstown and a road companion team called, admirably, the Cardiff Giants. They played not by New York Game (Knickerbocker) rules, but by those of the Massachusetts Game or Town Ball. I umpired at many of these contests — with all three of my sons as occasional players — in ill-fitting stovepipe hat and frock coat, from an 1858-rules contest at Tarrytown to 1882-rules at Troy and a memorable revival at Lake Placid of the odd 1860s game of baseball on ice. Knowledge of and adherence to the rules was important for umpire and players alike, but we were not above a bit of conspiratorial theatricality to highlight for spectators the most quaint features of the old ball games.

The game that was left behind, I came to believe, was in many ways the superior version, for both players and spectators. It was about joy. The corrosive effect of the modern era has been that while our work grinds at us as an impediment to leisure, our play seems more like work — ask any Little Leaguer — and joy is available not via competition but only in victory.

Vintage baseball is not yet as popular as Civil War battle recreations, but its numbers are drawing ever closer. Some fifty-plus clubs belong to the Vintage Baseball Association [as of 2006 — jt], playing in strict accordance with the rules of a particular season — 1845, 1858, various years in the 1860s, and a few stragglers into the next two decades. Another association, the Vintage Baseball Federation, has grown up with a less museum-oriented approach, playing in the spirit of the 1880s under an amalgam of rules that permit overhand pitching, modest period gloves and catcher’s equipment, and a more competitive if equally gentlemanly approach to game day. And most vintage base ball nines belong to neither group because they cannot yet commit to at least six scheduled games over the course of a summer.

As we look toward Labor Day weekend at Roxbury, these last lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer must mean … football. For this column, however, I am not talking about the preseason camps and games dotted with chorus-line hopefuls. Why should the vintage concept be limited to baseball?

The Vintage Football League (VFL) is the brainstorm of late friend and football expert nonpareil Bob Carroll. It could be a nationwide network of games, teams, and divisions dedicated to playing the game they love under the rules and equipment of bygone days. Bill Dudley, for example, was a runner, passer, punter, kicker and defensive back during his nine-year NFL career, highlighted by his 1946 MVP season in which he led the NFL in rushing, punt returns and interceptions. He was one of only three NFL players — and the last — to have won the triple crown for leading the league in three statistical categories; Sammy Baugh of the Washington Redskins did so in 1943, as did Steve Van Buren of the Philadelphia Eagles in 1945.

Let’s take, as a basis for the proposed VFL, the state of the game in 1947–48 (although we could offer local teams/divisions the option of playing according to the rules of 1888, 1905, 1920, 1932, or 1960 as well). In 1947–48, except for punters and place-kickers, the NFL permitted no substitutions during a possession and only three substitutions when the ball changed hands. (In earlier years, a man taken out for a substitute could not return in the same quarter.)

Consider the benefits to players and spectators. All this ludicrous situational substitution will be out the window, and fans can begin to see players as people instead of cogs. And with most of the players forced to play both offense and defense and to stay on the field for an extended time, guys who are naturally big will be able to play, but the behemoths who huff and puff through two downs — well, they won’t last.

If this return to sanity were to occur in the NFL, you’d find the size of players would decrease. And that would decrease injuries and increase career longevity. (Fat chance of that.) But in the VFL stars will shine because of their old-time combination of agility, ability, grit, and stamina.

For those of a pecuniary bent, the possibilities for merchandise creation and licensing are enormous, given the need for authentic uniforms and equipment. The VFL will provide fun for walk-on players at a local event, passionate devotion from teams and divisions with regularly scheduled games, and a fabulous off-season programming concept for television networks panting all spring and summer long for lack of the NFL.

What’s New, Old Sport? was originally published in Our Game on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A century ago, sportswriters had little to fear from libel suits or fact checkers.

Good stories, unsullied by truth, from Hugh Fullerton in the Chicago Tribune. What did Jake Weimer ever do incur the wrath of Fullerton or the Cubs, anyhow? In his three seasons in Chicago he won 58 games, and would go on to win 20 more for the Reds in 1906. As to third baseman Steinfeldt — he who “can’t play a lot of ball” — all that he would do was to round out the great infield of Tinker to Evers to Chance and help the 1906 Cubs to a season record of 116–36.

Oct. 29, 1905 — Harry Steinfeldt is to play with the Chicago National Leaguers next year, as he and Sebring have been swapped by Garry Herrmann for Jake Weimer. I wonder how on earth Garry ever got to be a political leader. If he buys gold bricks in politics like he does in baseball, Cincinnati will be a wonderfully governed town. Weimer will add to the streak of yellow in the Cincinnati club — and anyhow, Chicago will have Steinfeldt.

That reminds me of what Tim Donohue said to Con Doyle when Con got his release. “Con,” said Tim sadly, “I’m sorry you’re going. You couldn’t play much ball, but you were awful good company.”

So the Chicago scribes ought to be glad to receive Steinfeldt. He can’t play a whole lot of ball, but he is one of the best fellows and best story tellers in the business, and if Charlie Kuhn will put in a billiard cushion on the right-field bleachers so the ball will bound back when Steinfeldt makes one of those throws of his, it will be all right.

Just to start Chicago off right I’ll tell Steinfeldt’s star story.

“The gamest man that ever broke into the game,” said Steiny during a fanning bee in a hotel one night, “was the second baseman we had down in Dallas in the Texas League. We were playing against Galveston. In the first inning the center fielder of that Galveston team got to first and started to steal. Our catcher threw him out a block and, instead of sliding, he just took a flying leap at the second baseman and came down on his feet with his spikes.

“The game fellow limped around for a minute, then went on playing. That afternoon he made four putouts, eight assists, and four hits, including a double and a home run. After the game he and I were walking over to the clubhouse together when he said, I believe there’s something in my shoe.’ He stooped down, took off his shoe, and shook out two toes.”

Tim Hurst is back in the game, bringing with him a new stock of stories of happenings on the ball field. One of the best of Tim’s performances of the season was at St. Louis on the afternoon that St. Louis and Philadelphia played a desperate sixteen-inning tie.

Tim had been summoned hurriedly to officiate in the series at St. Louis and arrived without mask or chest protector. He got along all right until the ninth inning. The score was tied. St. Louis was forging to the front and Mack hastily summoned Rube Waddell to the box — to save the day for the Athletics. The afternoon was dark and Rube was fast. He was shooting the ball across so fast that it looked like a blur, and Schreck, Rube’s eccentric catcher, was nabbing the ball with one hand, catching it behind his back at one side and then the other.

Hurst was behind Schreck watching the spectacular performance of Mack’s battery eccentrique, and every time that Schreck grabbed the ball with one hand, Tim winced. Finally he touched the catcher on the shoulder.

“Mr. Schreck,” he asked softly, “are you absolutely certain to catch all of those?”

“Why, yes,” replied Schreck, rather dazed. “I’ll get ’em all.”

“All right,” said Tim. “I feel better now. You see I am back here without any mask or breast protector.”

The next day the ancient catcher, Joe Sugden, loaned Hurst his mask and chest protector.

Tim didn’t umpire exactly to suit Joe that day, and every time he passed Hurst as he came in from the coaching lines, Sugden would remark: “Tim, don’t forget that’s my mask and chest protector you’re wearing.”

The remark got rather monotonous to Hurst, and after the seventh inning he turned on Joe and said: “Certain persons won’t be needing chest protectors and masks much longer.”

And Joe said never a word the rest of the game.

That reminds me of Tim back in ’95, soon after Fielder Jones, now manager of the White Stockings, joined the Brooklyn team. Treadway was playing center field for Brooklyn then and young Jones was sitting on the bench. Chicago was playing Brooklyn down on the old Eastern Park grounds and the late and much lamented Tim Donohue was catching.

Early in the game Treadway made a vicious kick on one of Hurst’s decisions, and Hurst merely bided his time and bowed his legs a bit more. When Tim bows his legs it is the danger signal. The game was close and in the eighth inning Treadway came to bat.

Hurst at once began talking to Donohue — for Treadway’s benefit.

“Tim,” he said, “they tell me that young fellow Jones is a won­der.”

“Yes,” remarked Tim.

“They tell me he fields well and that the management is thinking of making a change.”

Treadway’s ears were pricked up.

“I hear that — ‘Wan strike.’ “ The ball had passed while Treadway was listening.

“I hear that a certain outfielder is likely to lose a job — ‘Two strikes.’” Again Treadway had let the ball go.

“They tell me that a certain outfielder that kicks at umpires is likely to go — and that Jones will get his — ‘Three strikes, you’re out’ — job,” concluded Tim as Treadway walked sadly toward the bench.

Baseball Roundup was originally published in Our Game on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Not baseball, but a story close to my heart

I wrote this for my “Play’s the Thing” column in the Woodstock Times, back on August 11, 2005. I have updated it significantly now, especially in a postscript. What moved me to do this? Oddly, a tweet a few weeks ago from the Bodleian Library, which got me to thinking about magic (yet again): https://goo.gl/55fZXd.

This story started for me when I was six years old. It resumed six years ago [i.e., 1999; this first appeared in 2005] after slumbering for nearly half a century, and then took a startling turn tonight, just hours ago as I write these words. Indeed, as the evening wore on toward midnight the story seemed to be writing itself, as if it were emanating from a Ouija board rather than a keyboard.

I recall coming home from a trip to the corner store on Lebanon Avenue in the Bronx, sometime in the summer of 1953, with less change than might have been expected from buying a quart of milk and a loaf of bread with a dollar. I was flustered but the shortfall seemed to amuse rather than upset my parents, who chalked it up to “the magician’s blood” in my veins. You see, my father’s grandfather [or possibly, as I was later to learn, grand uncle] had been Ernest Thorn, an internationally renowned illusionist who had performed before royalty and packed houses the world over. But the conjurer’s presence in my life was so faint, so remote, that the only reference to him, repeated whenever my spendthrift ways called for comment, came in the form of a joke: I had trumped the great magician because I knew how to make money disappear.

When my family talked about family, it was always about present company or those who had been extinguished. The records and mementos of earlier generations had blown away in the winds of war, as had so much of the family itself, and the stories, without artifacts to ground them or old people to tell them, just evaporated. Ernest Thorn had died in 1928, when my father was twelve, and while he thought he might have met him once, he could not be sure; certainly he had never met the woman he thought to be his paternal grandmother, Ernest’s wife Julia, née Zucker, who had died in 1919. My father had lost his own father in 1920, when he was four, so the death of a distant grandpa scarcely registered. Anyway, Ernest Thorn was nearly seventy-five, had suffered from diabetes for years, and had ceased to perform sometime in the early 1920s — so to my father’s eyes The Great One had seemed vastly diminished.

Six years ago [again, 1999], when my late father was in his eighty-third year and suffering from diabetes (among a myriad of other afflictions), he proudly showed me a book he had just acquired: David Price’s Magic: A Pictorial History of Conjurers in the Theater. He had photocopied for me the several pages in it devoted to Chevalier Ernest Thorn, as he was known for most of his career after his early knighthood by King Norodom I of Cambodia, following a performance that must have been especially dazzling. (Price: “One of Thorn’s most unusual effects was an illusion wherein he made a sudden appearance on a bare stage carrying a satchel. From the satchel, he removed several outfits of clothing and stuffed them with straw. The straw people suddenly came to life and acted as Thorn’s assistants for the remainder of the performance.”)

Furthermore, my father revealed, some years earlier he had written to Ricky Jay —later celebrated for his books, his one-man shows on Broadway, and his quirky roles in David Mamet films, but at that time a working magician and archivist — and had acquired from him a photostat of an American poster advertising the appearance of “Thorn & Darvin: Startling Phenomena.” This drab copy my dad had colored garishly with magic markers. Though showing no flair for art, he displayed a previously unimagined excitement and pride in his ancestor.

I caught the bug. I read what little I could lay my hands on — who the heck was Darvin, anyway? — and soon found on Ebay the following bonanza:

Description: THE SPHINX MAGIC MAGAZINE — ALL TWELVE ISSUES FOR 1910. “PHOTO”COVERS INCLUDE….CHEVALIER ERNEST THORN…T. ROY BARNES…MR. HAROLD WEBBE…MRS. EVA L. KELLAR…HAL MERTON…MADAME JULIA THORN, CHEVALIER ERNEST THORN’S WIFE… “JOE DUNNINGER”…JOSEFFY…CLYDE W. POWERS…SALVAIL AND LONG TOM…BURLING GALT HULL…”RAMESES”…..Plus inside more wonderful photographs, tricks, news of the day. THIS IS MAGIC HISTORY!

Paying little more than $10 apiece, I acquired the twelve copies, and then a Magician’s Monthly, and then a few more items. I began a correspondence with magic historian Gary Hunt, who led me to several collectors, archivists, and historians. And then I dropped off the hunt, just as suddenly as I had commenced it, until some idle websurfing last week produced a full-color Ernest Thorn poster I had not seen before, and then another, and then another … and as information new to me cascaded onto my screen, I determined to get the story straight and write about it.

Where to begin? My friend Ken Burns likes to remind his colleagues, when they wax conceptual, that “chronology is God’s way of telling a story.”

The Great One was born not as Ernest Thorn but as Moses Abraham Thorn in Jaroslau, in the polyglot province of Galicia, on September 23, 1853 (also reported as 1855 or 1856, but 1853 is the year on his tombstone). At that time the province was under Austrian sovereignty, though with considerable cultural freedom for Poles; today it is divided between Poland and the Ukraine. He saw a performance by the magician Simonelli at age ten and was hooked. By age sixteen he was touring the Austrian empire on foot, with his bag of tricks on his back. He apprenticed with senior magicians along the way and added his younger brother Heinrich (Henry) to his act, though as second banana and for many years uncredited. According to Ottokar Fischer, writing in the American Magician of January 1911, after two years in Constantinople Thorn went on to Egypt, where he spent one year, and India, performing before eighteen maharajas.

In Batavia he linked up again with Henry and there they formed the partnership of Thorn and Darvin, proceeding with shows at Java, Sumatra, the Philippines, “Kambodja, and others.” At the last mentioned stop, King Norodom I enriched and honored both brothers, knighting Ernest as a Chevalier of the French Empire. The pair went on to Burma, appearing before the King of Mandalay. By now they termed themselves “The Royal Illusionists” or “The Royal Mystifiers.”

On and on the glittering tales run, some with the hard glint of reality, others the spin of whole cloth. Fischer wrote, “Leaving Singapore for Hong Kong aboard the S.S. Flintchire, it ran aground during a typhoon on the Scarborough Shoal, a 14-mile-long coral reef outside Hong Kong. In that dreadful situation 21 of the passengers were willing to go on a boat and to row to the coast and look out for any help for the ship and its passengers. Thorn and his brother were amongst the volunteers. The sea getting very rough again the boat was not able to ply to the coast, on the contrary, by the hurricane it was driven in the open sea, where it strayed for seven days and seven nights. By penetrating water the boat got overloaded and sunk to the brim, and had to be perpetually scooped and emptied by all possible means. To increase the horror on the second day a big shark appeared behind the boat and followed it by day and by night. By a broken oar the beast had to be kept in distance without interruption to avert its continuous attacks. On the sixth day one of the passengers succeeded in striking it in the jaw so heavily that it bled to death and sunk. After a week of hopeless floating the boat reached the coast of Manila on the Philippine Islands.”

I’m not buying it, but we are in the realm of illusion, are we not? Ernest Thorn once wrote, “All life is illusion. The most pleasant illusion, however, is magic.”

Thorn, Darvin, and a fellow named Burton performed in Sydney, Australia in 1879. After a performance for King Kalakaua in the Hawaiian Islands in 1880, they headed for San Francisco, where they played the Standard Theater, infamous for hosting cancan dancers. Chronicle journalist Charles Warren Stoddard reported a Ms. Santley’s “immodest and indecent” terpsichordean exercise to the police. She was arrested, tried, convicted, and fined two hundred dollars. The cancan continued to be performed at the Standard, however, a tough act for Thorn & Darvin to follow.

But follow they did, appearing successfully in Oregon and British Columbia before repairing to St. Louis, Chicago, and New York. Of San Francisco, the New York Press declared: “The Standard Theatre was crowded to suffocation. Messrs. Thorn and Darvin are beyond description. They must, like so many other wonders of modern skill and science, really be seen to be appreciated.”

Darvin liked America so much that when Ernest was ready to leave, Brother Henry stayed. It was clear from his 1903 passport application that he had become a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1882, and according to the 1900 census (where he is listed as a working magician named “Henny”), he had married in 1893 or 1894 an Illinois lass named Laura, some twenty years his junior, and as of 1900 they had a three-year-old son named Harry, born in Pennsylvania, and another child who had died.

Henry Darvin was not present in the 1910 census and only today have I learned why he was not. In 1906 he went to Leipzig to tend to his aged mother , leaving his wife and son Harry in Reading, PA, where they appear to have set up another household (see below) Henry Darvin, faced with expatriation proceedings in 1914, appealed thus:

I came to Germany in 1906 intending to remain two weeks. I found my old mother who resides in Leipzig eighty-two years old and very feeble. She begged me to remain with her until she died. I did not know that I would imperil my citizenship by remaining [not to mention his marriage! — jt]. She can live but a little longer, and it is my intention at her death, as it has always been, to return to the United States and reside there.

On a whim I checked Henry Thorn in the 1920 census … and there he was, once again living in Manhattan with wife Laura and now an unmarried son Isidor (age 31 and a traveling salesman) and unmarried daughter Sylvia (age 26 and a bookkeeper). Confusing … especially as son Harry and wife Laura had also been reported in the 1920 census in another man’s household — that of Ambrose Goodrich in Reading, PA. Laura is “Laura Goodrich,” born in Illinois, and Harry Thorn is listed as Goodrich’s stepson! In this 1920 census Henry is listed as retied at age 62 (consistent with a date of birth of August 16, 1857, stated on his U.S. passport application from 1903).

A Henry “Harry” Darvin Thorn, Jr. was a private in the U.S. Army in 1917–1918 and graduated from Michigan University’s School of Natural Resources in 1921; he had been born in Philadelphia on February 17, 1897 and died in Richmond, Virginia on October 26, 1979. Harry’s mother, Virginia death records confirmed, was Laura (maiden name Cubitt) Thorn Willson — indicating a divorce from Henry (another?) — and his father was Henry Thorn, born in Austria. In 1940 Harry Darvin Thorn, Jr. lives in Minneapolis with his wife Marjorie (Snavely), whom he had married in Michigan in 1922, and their daughters Jean, Dorothy, and Laura, some of whom may survive (!).

Meanwhile Ernest and his wife Julia, who acted as his manager and assistant, enjoyed continued success in Vienna, where they played a record 209 consecutive dates. Thorn performed either “An Hour in Dreamland” or a vaudeville turn described as “Six Sensational Illusions in Under 20 Minutes.” The finale and pièce de resistance of the latter was the “Illusion: Das Mahatma-Wunder von Benares der Madame Blawatzka,” echoing the era’s famous spiritualist and founder of Theosophy: Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky.

In the year 1896, according to Fischer, E.T. went to Budapest, “where the Millennium Exhibition, a kind of World Fair, was arranged. Here he took all entertaining Halls and Theaters in his hand, becoming Chief Manager of all of them. However, that undertaking was a failure and Thorn lost nearly the whole of his fortune. [Evidently he was not the only Thorn who could make money disappear.] The rest of his money he invested in the foundation of a big Music Hall in Lemberg [also known as Lvov], Galizia. As it did not succeed according to his expectations he gave the hall up after three years and he returned again to the performing business.” The Lemberg hall was known as the Colosseum, and it was next door to the famous Gimpel’s Jewish Theatre on ulica Sloneczna. Moses Abraham Thorn might append Chevalier to his stage name, but his Judaic roots were undeniable, as they would be for other Jewish magicians who adopted improbably exotic names, from Harry Houdini (born in Hungary as Erik Weisz) to Max Malini (born in Poland as Max Katz Breit).

Oddly, Ernest had turned his back on the name of Judaism’s greatest magician, Moses.

Forced by finances to return to the tour, he performed in London in 1904 to great acclaim and then played four weeks at the Scala Theatre in Copenhagen and four weeks at the Svea Theatre in Stockholm. In 1908–10 he and Julia, along with six assistants, toured South America, with an extended stay in Buenos Aires.

The Sphinx of June 15, 1910 features a portrait of “Madame Julia Thorn” on the cover. The editor wrote: “Unfortunately for the readers of the Sphinx I can do no more than present the likeness of Madame Thorn because the modesty of her celebrated husband, Chevalier Ernest Thorn, prevented him from giving me even the briefest biographical sketch of his beautiful and talented wife.” However, David Price wrote that Ernest was not modest but morbidly jealous.

Julia died in 1919, at the age of fifty, in Leipzig. Ernest slid into decline and was almost wiped out in the German currency panic of 1922. Price writes that Henry joined his brother for his final years. As to Ernest, he wrote: “He had gathered antiques all over the world in his travels and he began to live on the antiques which were sold one by one. His last years were spent in poverty and he died penniless in Leipzig on May 20 [corrected to conform with date on headstone, which bears a heading of “Rest Here in Dreamland”], 1928. After his death, Julia’s jewels were found sewed up in a cushion. They were valuable enough to have permitted him to live in dignity in his final years, but the jewels were the last remaining possession of his beloved Julia and he refused to part with them.”

I’m not buying the pathos, but this is where I had expected the trail and the story to end. Then by chance, mere hours ago, I Googled my way to a defunct family forum on a genealogical site, where I spied this 1999 query:

Chevalier Ernest Thorn
Posted by Edmond Thorn on Monday, 8 November 1999, at 5:32 p.m.
Dear Sir or Madame,
I am inquiring about my ancestor, actually my great paternal uncle, born in 1855 who was a renowned stage magician. He began his career in partnership with his brother, Henry (stage name, Henry Darvin). I would appreciate any information about either or both of them.
Thank you. Sincerely, E.Thorn

I immediately wrote to him:

Dear Edmond,

My name is John Thorn and I just this minute stumbled upon your six-year-old note to the Thorn Family Forum. Ernest Thorn, about whom I know a great deal indeed, and possess something of an archive, is my great-grandfather. I presume that Henry is your great-grandfather, and that we are cousins, unknown to each other.

Please send an email back and we’ll connect further. Best regards, John.

Minutes later, he replied:

Dear John,
It is indeed a pleasure to hear from someone in the Family, since my family was rather decimated in Europe. It would be very nice to hear where you live. More about how we are related.

I own some things from Ernest, posters and such and am interested in Magic memorabilia. I visited his grave in Leipzig. As you know his brother Darvin did not follow him back to Europe. Are you related directly to him??

My great grand father was Ernest’s brother so Ernest would have been my great grand uncle. But besides Ernest there are other illustrious and fascinating members of our family. I hope to hear from you again in less than 6 years as I am already 66. Cordially, Edmond Thorn.

I had pursued Ernest Thorn in white-hot fashion, believing the trail had gone cold for Henry. Now I learned that Henry had a surviving line of descent unknown to any of my kin. I now had a “great grand cousin,” thrice removed, and maybe an entirely new family. Magic.

Postscript: Not long after this story appeared in print and online, an antiques dealer from Hamburg emailed me to say that in cleaning out a house he had stumbled upon a certificate from 1879, in French and Cambodian, which conferred knighthood upon Ernest Thorn; it was signed by King Norodom I. In looking for someone to whom he might sell it he stumbled upon my article. Might I want it, he asked; he thought $150 would be a fair price. I could not write that check fast enough, and though marred by crude tape repairs, Ernest Thorn’s certificate of inclusion in the Légion d’Honneur — and its first degree, that of Chevalier — has graced my walls ever since.

Henry Darvin Thorn, it turned out, had indeed returned to Europe in the 1920s to care for his ailing brother Ernest, and most likely never again returned to America. Only recently did I discover the end of his trail. As it had done for Ernest, Judaism had marked him. Henry had resided for some time in the Ariowitsch Foundation Israelite Retirement Home in Leipzig, established in 1931. In 1940 there were 94 Jews in the “Ariowitsch-Heim.” On September 19, 1942, all residents and employees were sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Within two weeks, the Gestapo took over the building.

Henry Darvin Thorn was not sent away, perhaps because of his advanced “decrepitude,” according to his death certificate — which I located only because he was thought to be an American citizen, and thus his death was reported to the Swiss Consulate of Leipzig. He died in the former old-age home, re-purposed as the city’s Gestapo center, on the morning of January 24, 1943, at the estimated age of eighty-six.

Since 2007 the building has been a center of Jewish culture, under its old name, the Ariowitsch House (http://ariowitschhaus.de/).

Magician’s Blood was originally published in Our Game on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This was, for me at least, the highlight of the 2017 Baseball Hall of Fame Induction Weekend. The three Robinsons — Sharon, Rachel, and David — had just arrived at the Otesaga Hotel and were checking in when friends Marty Lurie and Barry Bloom, with whom I had been chatting in the lobby, persuaded them to take a quick photo. Tomorrow Rachel would receive the triannual Buck O’Neil Lifetime Achievement Award in a ceremony at Doubleday Field.

I had spoken with Sharon not so long ago, shortly after the public-television airing of the documentary by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon, in which we both had been featured — with the starring role reserved, of course, for her mother. The last time I had spoken with Rachel Robinson had been nearly thirty years ago, when my since departed friend Jules Tygiel and I had collaborated on a story for SPORT Magazine, “Jackie Robinson’s Signing: The Real, Untold Story.” Our research had revealed that Branch Rickey had never intended for Jackie to be the lone pioneer of the integration saga, and that several others — including future major leaguers Don Newcombe, Roy Campanella, and Sam Jethroe — were slated to become his teammates in Brooklyn.

I interviewed Rachel for that story in 1988, and she was utterly surprised to learn how circumstance, particularly New York City politics, had driven Rickey to act quickly, settling upon a solitary signing. On October 7, 1945 Rickey had written to Arthur Mann, the Brooklyn club secretary who was secretly preparing an article for LOOK Magazine:

We just can’t go now with the article. The thing isn’t dead, — not at all. It is more alive than ever and that is the reason we can’t go with any publicity at this time. There is more involved in the situation than I had contemplated. Other players are in it and it may be that I can’t clear these players until after the December meetings, possibly not until after the first of the year. You must simply sit in the boat. . . .

There is a November 1 deadline on Robinson, — you know that. I am undertaking to extend that date until January 1st so as to give me time to sign plenty of players and make one break on the complete story. Also, quite obviously it might not be good to sign Robinson with other and possibly better players unsigned.

Rickey “was such a deliberate man,” Rachel recalled in our conversation, “and this letter is so urgent. He must have been very nervous as he neared his goal. Maybe he was nervous that the owners would turn him down and having five people at the door instead of just one would have been more powerful.”

Rickey and Mann had arranged for LOOK Magazine photographer Maurice Terrell to take photos at San Diego’s Lane Field (surreptitiously, from the stadium rim) of Jackie and two teammates on Chet Brewer’s barnstorming team, the Kansas City Royals (thus the “R” on the cap below). The full story is told in three parts, commencing with: https://goo.gl/wo7gXa.

I showed Rachel some of the photographs that Terrell had taken, including one portrait that she had never seen and wished me to copy for her, because “Jack seemed so young, so vital.” This is that photo.

Every Picture Tells a Story was originally published in Our Game on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Baseball’s Greatest Graphic Artist

If this were not a Wrigley Field program from 1962 it could be displayed at the Museum of Modern Art. It was one of the last Chicago Cubs programs designed by the incomparable Otis Shepard, a pioneering graphic artist who had worked with Philip K. Wrigley’s gum company and his ball club for thirty years.

Though trained in the painterly tradition of turn-of-the century illustrators and commercial graphic artists like Edward Penfield, J.C. Leyendecker, and Norman Rockwell, Shepard gravitated to more sleek, reductive forms — with ever increasing reliance upon the airbrush — after his marriage to fellow artist Dorothy Van Gorder in 1929. For many of Otis Shepard’s illustrations, his wife was an unsigned collaborator.

The success of Otis’s glowing ads for Wrigley Gum may have shaped his approach to promoting the Cubs, beginning in the 1930s.

Shepard’s designs did not appear on Cubs programs and scorecards until the 1940s but his style was plain on other assignments in the 1930s, including the redesign of the Cubs uniform.

Shepard’s design of the 1951 75th anniversary sleeve patch for the Cubs was adopted by the National League and his reputation as the premier designer in baseball circles was cemented.

He designed uniforms, programs, and logos for the Chicago Cubs, and the logo and base uniform for the All American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL).

For me, the image on the 1948 scorecard below evokes Magritte and is my favorite.

A 2014 book, Dorothy and Otis: Designing the American Dream, is a splendid tribute (http://www.dorothyandotis.com/).

Otis Shepard was originally published in Our Game on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“I informed the bearers of the truce that ‘unconditional surrender’ was the only possible solution of the vexed problem.”

“There was a time,” wrote John Montgomery Ward in 1887, “when the National League stood for integrity and fair dealing. Today, it stands for dollars and cents. Once it looked to the elevation of the game and an honest exhibition of the sport; today, its eyes are on the turnstile…. Players have been bought, sold and exchanged as though they were sheep instead of American citizens.”

In describing the plight of a ballplayer Ward — who with a Giants teammate, pitcher Tim Keefe, had been the architect of the players’ “union” of the day, the Brotherhood of Professional Base Ball Players — invoked the rhetoric of the Civil War, so recently concluded: “Like a fugitive slave law, the reserve clause denies him a harbor or a livelihood, and carries him back, bound and shackled, to the club from which he attempted to escape. We have, then, the curious result of a contract which on its face is for seven months being binding for life….”

The idea of a reserve clause that would bind a player to his team despite lack of agreement as to the next year’s terms was a way for owners to limit player mobility as well as to suppress salary. Originally applied to only five players on a club back in 1879, it came to be extended to most anyone on the club. The final utilization of the reserve clause in the mid-1880s, and particularly galling to the players, was that it became an item of value and potential commerce for the club, so that even a club disbanding at season’s end, rather than releasing its players from further obligation, might sell its player contracts, with their exclusive options for hire, to another club based on the survivability of the reserve.

Fans today may regard the reserve clause as a museum piece, put on a high shelf after Andy Messermith, Dave McNally, and Marvin Miller blew it up in the mid-1970s. But for nearly a century it had stoked grievances, suppressed salaries, and impeded the growth of the game. Major League Baseball, a ten-billion-dollar-a-year-generating business now, had struggled to retain relevance, let alone profitability, in the 1960s. The players’ revolt of the 1970s (remember Curt Flood?) saved the owners from their own worst instincts and, incidentally, saved the game.

It all might have taken place much earlier — back in 1890, when labor and management fought to the death. “I am for war without quarter,” said former player and then Chicago owner Albert Goodwill Spalding at the time; “I was opposed to it at first, but now I want to fight until one of us drops dead.”

What happened was that both warriors very nearly collapsed into each other’s arms at the final bell. Ward and the Brotherhood joined with capitalists to form a new major league that was not bound by the National League’s reserve clause, raided its star players, and competed in many of the same cities head-to-head — in New York, for example, a PL game and an NL game would be played in adjoining ballparks in northern Manhattan at the very same time. Both leagues padded their attendance figures egregiously to convince the other of its prosperity but by season’s end nearly all of the clubs in both leagues were ready to accept a merger.

Then Spalding played a game of bluff that nearly wrecked his own league as well as Ward’s. But somehow he convinced the PL’s backers to surrender without conditions. The American Association, a major league since 1882, was largely untouched in the fray but was limping badly for reasons of its own. Spalding turned his sights on that league next, and they too surrendered.

Spalding’s “victory” ushered in the most disastrous decade in baseball history — yes, even worse than the 1960s — in which the three major leagues of 1890 were reduced, in the course of little over a year, to one.

What if Spalding and his fellow owners had not won? What if the Players’ League had continued, whether as a separate entity or in merged form? What if the reserve clause had been stricken or softened back then? Would free agency have come to baseball not in 1975 but in 1891?

What if the National League had not killed off two rivals in 1890–91 and avoided the disastrous twelve-team league of 1892–1899? There would have been no need felt to strip the NL down to a manageable eight teams for 1900 … thus giving rise to Ban Johnson’s American League, which he declared as a major rival for 1901.

What if the peace agreement between the AL and NL, with their mutual respect for the reserve clause, had not created an opening for yet another rival, the Federal League, which removed the repressive clause from player contracts? In short, what if the owners had viewed competition as a spur, not a threat, to growing their business?

Herein lies that tale…

The simmering conflict between players and management of the National League had boiled over in the winter of 1888–1889 during a round-the-world tour that Spalding had organized for an all-star aggregation of players. Departing from the West Coast for Hawaii, the players proceeded to play in Australia, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and Egypt, actually playing a formal game before the Great Pyramid. While on the high seas, however, the players learned that the owners had enacted an outrageous plan for the upcoming season. They would classify players by their presumed abilities, then cap their salaries within those classifications. After stops at Naples, Florence, and Rome, the world tourists spent ten days in Paris and another ten in London. At this time, near the end of March, shortstop Ward left his mates behind and returned to New York, but it was too late to reverse the owners’ course.

His fellow owners appointed Spalding to head the war effort to save the reserve clause, the sales system, and the National League itself. Some found amusing his pomp and bluster about the sanctity of a system he had helped create, in which labor was subservient to capital, for he had been a contract jumper in his day. For tactical lessons, Spalding reached back to the days when the National League was but a glimmer in the eye of William Hulbert, Chicago’s owner in the last years of the National Association, the circuit that the NL supplanted in a coup that featured Chicago’s midseason raiding of such players as Cap Anson from Philadelphia and Spalding from Boston. Hulbert was concerned that the National Association could invalidate his contracts and, perhaps, expel his Chicago club. Then came the brainstorm.

“Spalding,” Hulbert said to his Rockford-born ally in revolution, “I have a new scheme. Let us anticipate the Eastern cusses and organize a new association before the March [1876] meeting, and then see who does the expelling.” Emphasizing high principle — no betting, no drinking, no “revolving” from one club to another in midseason, respect for scheduled playing dates and the judgment of umpires — Hulbert took the high road, at least publicly. But his brilliant mix of propaganda, obfuscation, and bought-off news sources would supply Spalding with a lifelong lesson in bluff, bluster, and bravado that would succeed spectacularly in the days and weeks following the 1890 campaign.

At first the reserve rule had not been the players’ principal grievance but when player contracts started to be sold among the clubs for large sums, the players felt it only equitable that they should receive a portion of their purchase price as a sort of bonus; after all, it was their performance, not that of the ticket sellers, that had prompted the high-priced transactions. After implementation of the rigid salary structure of the “classification plan,” players saw that the reserve rule could be invoked to reduce their salaries. They believed that if they were not worth the salary paid for the previous year, they should be released and allowed to negotiate for the sale of their services to other clubs.

The padding of attendance figures by both sides had commenced at the 1890 season’s opening, although not to the outrageous extent that became the rule later. Spalding checked some figures reported and arrived at what he called the “true figures” by means of “spotters,” who reported back that the Players’ League was dying. As of May 24th, attendance for one week as reported: National League, 15,126 for 13 games, an average of 1,163; Brotherhood, 13,127 for 14 games, an average of 937.

But here was the problem: the average NL attendance for the past several years had been about 3,500 per game at 50 cents per head, plus grandstand receipts. The League draw thus far for 1890 was just about enough to pay traveling expenses, advertising and other incidentals, to say nothing of player salaries. Costs would spiral out of control for both sides, though neither would admit it.

Both leagues continued to pad their attendance figures yet Spalding convinced the capitalists behind the Players’ League that the National League owners could hold on indefinitely; in truth they could not, and several were scrambling to cut separate deals to consolidate their clubs with those of the PL. Backers of clubs in both leagues, staring at the balance sheets, were themselves about to cave. Still, Ward envisioned a year-end truce between equals, with mutual respect for contracts, no conflicting playing dates, exchange of exhibition contests, league maintenance of discipline, and a postseason world championship series. The pennant winners of the National League and the American Association (which had largely been spared from player raids by the PL) squared off in a World Series of so little interest that after Brooklyn tied the Series with Louisville at three games apiece before an intimate gathering of 300 in the late October cold, neither club felt motivated to play a deciding game. The Boston Players’ League champions, led by future Hall of Famers King Kelly, Dan Brouthers, and Hoss Radbourn, were certainly the best club in baseball, but for them there would be no postseason opponent.

Negotiations between the warring NL and PL commenced on October 10, with intermediary Allan W. Thurman, an owner of the Columbus club in the American Association, acting as “the White Wings of Peace.” His two-league plan was: one league with a 50 cent admission, consisting of Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, New York, and Philadelphia.; and another league with a 25 cent admission, comprising Baltimore, Boston, Cincinnati, Louisville, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Washington.

By the very next day, all but two or three owners from either warring league were prepared to fold their tents and make peace. It was agreed that the three leagues should be merged into two, one a powerful combination, the other not so powerful, using what was left. The Players’ League owners insisted that if they abandoned their name, the National must do likewise. One league might be titled the “United League” or just “The League,” the other the American Association as before. But the National League — led by Spalding, who had fought to create it — argued that its name must be retained for prestige purposes.

For the next ten days negotiations stalled, until the Brotherhood player representatives smelled a rat. What happened? I believe that Spalding, who was the only remaining owner from the National League’s conception or inception in 1875–76 (Chicago’s Hulbert had died in 1882, Boston’s management had changed, the six other founding clubs fell apart and were replaced), here seized the reins. He may well have sensed an affront to the memory of Hulbert and reacted personally, taking it upon himself to throw a wrench into the works while contemplating a Game of Bluff on a scale far more daring than the one the owners of both leagues had played to date.

Poker was the model for American business, then as now. Spalding ultimately cut the players out of the negotiation, insisting that talks be conducted between the money men alone, counting on the greenhorn owners of the PL to break ranks. A month, later, on November 22, 1890, the Players’ League was dealt its death blow. Spalding said: “The magnates of the Players’ League allowed the players to run things to too great an extent. A man may be able to throw curves and know nothing about business. Patti [Adelina Patti, the great coloratura of the age] can sing but I doubt if she could manage the Auditorium.”

But what if Spalding’s gambit had failed, in any of a number of possible ways? The PL backers might have insisted, as they did initially and faintheartedly, that the players were the bedrock of the league (and thus gave the league its name) and could not be left out. If the PL backers had held on a bit longer, would the NL owners, some of whom had already bankrupted, have themselves waved a white flag and gone for a merger?

“Beware of what you wish for” is the motto that might have been inscribed on the monument to this sorry episode, in which everyone lost. The 1891 American Association, in its final year of operation, counted 1,296,000 fans, or an average of 162,000 per team, a figure very comparable to the 169,060 of the National League. In 1892, with the PL a memory, the AA gone, and the NL a twelve-team circuit, the average team attendance was less than 152,000. The lesson to be drawn was clear.

Even Spalding came to realize, by the end of the 1890s, that his beloved baseball was yielding its spot as the national pastime to college football, bicycling, even trapshooting (“The modern young man takes up a sport that he can actually do,” one newspaper opined. “No longer is he to be a bench warmer.”)

How might baseball have progressed if Spalding had not taken it upon himself to save the National League rather than the game itself? The reserve clause would not have been applied to players holding out for a higher salary, or protesting that they (like Curt Flood) had been sold without their prior consent. There would have been no reduction of a swollen National League from twelve teams to eight, thus giving heart (as well as abandoned cities and ballparks) to a renewed rival effort by the American League, which had been a minor circuit in 1900. The Americans then might have come in as a third major, as the Federal League would do in 1914–15 after a prior year as a minor circuit.

Kenesaw Mountain Landis, during his time on the bench, might not have established himself as a hero to Organized Baseball for his closeting the Federal League’s lawsuit for years, precipitating a 1922 Supreme Court ruling that exempted Major League Baseball from antitrust law … oh, I am getting carried away now. Let’s conclude with Spalding’s words from twenty years later (1911), when he reviewed the wreckage with some amazement:

It was with very great satisfaction, therefore, that in the fall of 1890, at the close of that season, I received a delegation from the management of the Players’ League, bearing a flag of truce. I was not President of the National League, but, as chairman of its “War Committee,” I was fully authorized to treat with those who came asking for terms. Of course, I was conversant with existing conditions in both organizations. I knew that they were on their last legs, and I was equally aware that we had troubles of our own. We had been playing two games all through — Base Ball and bluff. At this stage I put up the strongest play at the latter game I had ever presented. I informed the bearers of the truce that “unconditional surrender” was the only possible solution of the vexed problem. To my surprise, the terms were greedily accepted. I had supposed that they would at least ask for something.

Ward had blamed the demise of the Players’ League on “stupidity, avarice, and treachery.” Its official death came shortly before noon on January 16, 1891, when it was ratified out of existence at a joint meeting of the National League and American Association. After the decision, Ward and other Players’ League leaders met at Nick Engel’s “Home Plate” restaurant where they toasted each other in song. Al Spalding and NL officials were there, too, celebrating victory. Hearing the singing from a back room, the victors joined the vanquished in the main room. “Pass the wine around,” said Ward, standing to give a toast. “The league is dead. Long live the league.”

Spalding’s Bluff: The Game’s Crucial Moment was originally published in Our Game on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Might it be James Fenimore Cooper?

On the question of who might properly be termed the Father of Baseball if not Cooperstown’s favorite son, Abner Doubleday, Hugh MacDougall, Historian of that bucolic villge on Lake Otsego , wrote to SABR’s 19th-century listserv in 2004:

“Might I suggest a new candidate, as the thermometer here in Cooperstown drops. Tongue in cheek, might I propose James Fenimore Cooper — who may not have invented baseball (indeed, Cooperstown banned ball playing on its streets as early as 1816), but who may well have provided [in his 1838 novel Home as Found] the earliest literary description of a baseball game — and as it would turn out, located it precisely on what is now the site of the National Baseball Museum and Hall of Fame here in Cooperstown.”

Predictably, I took the bait:

“Home as Found does provide, as far as I know, the first mention of ball play in an America novel (remember, the word “base ball” is not employed), a distinction of sorts, I suppose. My literary opinion of Cooper (yup, I was an English major back in the day, at Flintstone U.) is the same as Mark Twain’s: that the prose is dreadful and the stories contrived. Of our two early giants, Cooper and Irving, I’ll take Irving. Yet Cooper is important, and not only because he was once famous — so was Mrs. Southworth. Cooper was to prose what Thomas Cole was to painting: an American original despite his classical leanings, and a beacon for those who followed in the nativist tradition.

“What does this have to do with baseball? In its sport as in its arts and politics, America strove to stand on its own feet, to be unshackled from European — and especially British — tradition. Why did cricket fall to the wayside? Not just because it was slow, genteel, and required leisure of the sort unavailable to the working class. It was just too damn British, like the novels of Bulwer-Lytton or the paintings of Gainsborough.”

It is fun, every now and then, to strut forth for my friends a bit of what I have picked up along the way besides baseball. This is what Cooper had to say of ball play in Cooperstown:

“Do you refer to the young men on the lawn, Mr. Effington? . . . Why, sir, I believe they have always played ball in that precise locality.”

He called out in a wheedling tone to their ringleader, a notorious street brawler. “A fine time for sport, Dickey; don’t you think there would be more room in the broad street than on this crowded lawn, where you lose our ball so often in the shrubbery?”

“This place will do, on a pinch,’ bawled Dickey, ‘though it might be better. If it warn’t for the plagued house, we couldn’t ask for a better ball-ground. . . .”

“Well, Dickey . . . , there is no accounting for tastes, but in my opinion, the street would be a much better place to play ball in than this lawn. . . . There are so many fences hereabouts . . . It’s true the village trustees say there shall be no ball-playing in the street, but I conclude you don’t much mind what they say or threaten.”

“Well,” I said of Cooper’s description, “it’s a description of ball play of some sort (with or without a bat). But to call this Cooper excerpt a reference to baseball is a yarn of the sort Cooperstown has spun out before. Literary references to ball play prior to 1816 are abundant, in a variety of cultures. See, for example, ‘The scholars of every school have their ball, or baton, in their hands; the ancient and wealthy men of the city come forth on horseback to see the sport of the young men. . . .’ (From Sports and Pastimes of Old Time Used in This City [i.e., London — JT], Fitzstephen, ca. 1175–83.)

“But if the emphasis to be on early literary representations of ball play,
one might look to the Icelandic saga Grettir the Strong (14th century). In
Section XV, GAMES AT MIDFJORDVATN, we find:

These youths used to play at ball together at Midfjord Water. Those from
Midfjord and from Vididal used to meet there, and there came many from
Vestrhop and Vatnsnes with some from Hrutafjord. Those who came from afar
used to lodge there. Those who were about equal in the ball-game were
matched together, and generally they had much fun in the autumn. Grettir
went to the sports when he was fourteen years old at the request of his
brother Atli. The parties were made up. Grettir was matched against Audun,
the youth already mentioned, who was a few years the elder. Audun struck the ball over Grettir’s head so that he could not reach it, and it bounded far
away over the ice. Grettir lost his temper, thinking he had done it out of
mischief, but he fetched the ball, brought it back and going up to Audun
drove it straight into his forehead, so that the skin was broken.” [and more
in this sanguinary vein — JT].

“Then, sticking to the literary remnants of ball play, there’s the celebrated poem in the 1744 Little Pretty Pocket-Book, published by John Newbery, and
Jane Austen’s mention of not merely ball but base-ball in her 1798 novel Northanger Abbey, published in 1817, after her death.

“I feel as if it is ‘piling on’ to quibble with Cooper after treating Doubleday so rudely and challenging Cartwright. All the same, Cooper’s mention of ball play in Home as Found is not even very early, let alone ‘the earliest description of a baseball game.’”

Like any successful notion, baseball (that is, the game as we would recognize it today) has many fathers — I’d nominate at least these: Cartwright, Adams, Chadwick, Harry Wright, Hulbert, and Spalding, with a nod to Creighton [that’s what I thought in 2004; today I would add William R. Wheaton]. Town ball may have many more fathers, but what are their names? The Knickerbockers may have been dwarves who stood on the shoulders of the giants of old, but their innovations were critical, and I agree with Fred Ivor-Campbell that without them, baseball as a game worthy of adult involvement might not have survived.

Tom Gilbert’s notion that somehow we (those of us who are poking around in
baseball pre-1857) are asking the wrong questions and thus deriving the
wrong answers throws me back to the schoolboy debate over whether the man makes the the age or the age makes the man. Absent Cartwright (Adams,
Chadwick, Hulbert, et al.), would baseball have turned just out the same,
only later perhaps? Does history throw up heroes as destiny requires or do
men shape the future through individual spark? Do we agree with Carlyle or
align with Leibniz? We won’t get to the bottom of that one anytime soon.

Tom Gilbert is right to perceive that there is no essential dilemma in the conflicting claims of paternity: Monica Nucciarone is not attempting to replace the plaster saint of Doubleday with one of Cartwright, nor am I advocating for Adams to the exclusion of others. Baseball evolved, and David Block’s forthcoming book [Baseball Before We Knew It, 2005] will smash some other bric-a-brac notions of the game’s origins. Where Tom may be wrong is in supposing that there is a right question to ask. There are many worthwhile questions, many of which will have satisfying if not bulletproof answers.

While it is worthwhile to identify key influences along the trail of baseball’s development, as with that of jazz or cinema or any other thing, it is also worthwhile to attempt to know what may, after arduous research,
be knowable about the distant past, through demonstrable fact and reasonable surmise.

It is not for anyone [on this SABR list] to prescribe or proscribe the research
interests or activities of others, to declare certain problems solved for
all time (as the Mills Commission once did) because they have been solved to
their own satisfaction. In my view, and in my experience, so much remains to be done in the pre-1857 period, in part because previous scholarship was driven by dubious premises, and in part because there remain not only alternative explanations but fresh explorations.

For example, I think the Civil War has been a too-convenient explanation for the fading of cricket and the rise of baseball. I also think the rude elements of the Massachusetts Game that made it so much fun to play and to watch succumbed to the more genteel, scientific, and rational New York Game for moralistic and nationalistic reasons having little to do with the intrinsic merits of the game. But I digress.

Ask different questions, by all means, and share your answers with the
group. Why did the New York Game succeed? Why did the Massachusetts Game fail? Why did the town-ball variant played by the Olympics of Philadelphia disappear, though it had been formalized with a constitution, by-laws, clubhouse, and rules in 1833, when Cartwright was 13 years old? These are all good, interesting questions, to which I and others in our group would be pleased to offer modest, tentative answers.

Searching for the Father of Baseball was originally published in Our Game on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The final weeks of the 1877 National League season witnessed a mysterious collapse of the Louisville club, permitting Boston to take the pennant rather handily. The suspicious Louisville directors soon caught on that four of their players had sold out to gamblers. Among these was star pitcher Jim Devlin, who had hurled every one of the club’s 129 games over the previous two years. Distraught over his banishment by the league that winter, impoverished and penitent, the poor soul begged help from league president William Hulbert and Boston manager Harry Wright. His poignant letter to Wright is reproduced below, and the wrenching scene in Hulbert’s office is described by Albert Spalding, whose office adjoined Hulbert’s.

The letter is presented verbatim.

Phila Feb 24th 1878

Mr Harry Wright Dear Sir as I am Deprived from Playing this year I thought I woed [would] write you to see if you Coed [could] do anything for me in the way of looking after your ground or anything in the way of work I Dont Know what I am to do I have tried hard to get work of any Kind But I Canot get it do you Know of anyway that you think I Coed [could] get to Play again I Can asure you Harry that I was not Treated right and if Ever I Can see you to tell you the Case you will say I am not to Blame I am living from hand to mouth all winter I have not got a Stich of Clothing or has my wife and child You Dont Know how I am Situated for I Know if you did you woed [would] do Something for me I am honest Harry you need not Be afraid the Louisville People made me what I am to day a Begger I trust you will not Say any­thing to anyone about the Contents of this to any one if you Can do me this favor By letting me take Care of the ground or anything of that Kind I Beg of you to do it and god will reward you if I Dont or let me Know if you have any Ide [idea] of how I Coed [could] get Back I am Dumb Harry I dont Know how to go about it So I Trust you will answear this and do all you Can for me So I will Close by Sending you &) Geo and all the Boys my verry Best wishes hoping to hear from you Soon I am yours Trouly

James A Devlin

No 908 Atherton St

Phila Pa

No record of Harry Wright’s response, if any, survives.

Louisville had endured a public betting scandal in 1876 when right fielder George Bechtel’s wire to Devlin was intercepted:

Bingham House, Philadelphia, June 10, 1876. We can make $500 if you lose the game today. Tell John [Chapman, the club’s manager] and let me know at once. BECHTEL.

Devlin replied:

I want you to understand I am not that kind of man. I play ball for the interest of those who hire me. DEVLIN.

Louisville said farewell to Bechtel, but he was re-signed by the Mutuals, his club in 1872, and played two games with them before the National League expelled him.

Philadelphia native Devlin was vulnerable to such opportunities as Bechtel presented. He had not been paid his salary for two months, he told a Chicago Tribune reporter in November 1876. “I wanted to get home to see the show [the Centennial Exhibition], but I can’t walk fast enough to get there now, and see no other way to go.” Though Devlin begged the league office for his release so he could accept an offer from St. Louis, he found himself in Louisville again for a second campaign.

Devlin’s pitching vaulted Louisville to the top of the standings by August 1877, but on the ensuing Eastern trip they lost all eight of their league contests (tying one), and lost several exhibition games too. Left fielder George Hall, who on August 16 was hitting .373 as the Grays held first place, proceeded to bat .149 over the next eighteen games as the club plummeted from the top. Devlin and Hall confessed to throwing games and, with accused infielder Al Nichols and catcher Bill Craver, were banned for life.

In the winter of 1877–78, the distraught Devlin made his way north to Chicago to plead with Hulbert. Albert Spalding, present in the adjoining office of the suite he shared with Hulbert, recalled the meeting many years later, in America’s National Game (1911):

The situation, as he kneeled there in abject humiliation, was beyond the realm of pathos. It was a scene of heartrending tragedy. Devlin was in tears, Hulbert was in tears. . . . I heard Devlin’s plea to have the stigma removed from his name. I heard him entreat, not on his own account, he acknowledged himself unworthy of consideration, but for the sake of his wife and child. I beheld the agony of humiliation depicted on his features as he confessed his guilt and begged for mercy.

I saw the great bulk of Hulbert’s frame tremble with the emotion he vainly sought to stifle. I saw the president’s hand steal into his pocket as if seeking to conceal his intended act from the other hand. I saw him take a $50 bill and press it into the palm of the prostrate player. And then I heard him say, as he fairly writhed with the pain his own words caused him, “That’s what I think of you, personally; but, damn you, Devlin, you are dishonest; you have sold a game, and I can’t trust you. Now go; and let me never see your face again; for your act will not be condoned so long as I live.”

Devlin next wrote to Harry Wright, in the letter above, and cleared his name for play in the National Association of 1879, a minor league. He also played ball in San Francisco in 1880 and with New Orleans in the winter of 1881–1882. He may have played elsewhere, too, under his own name or assumed ones. In the spring of 1882, for example, he was playing for Trenton. When, on June 5, the Burlington Club refused to take the field against the Trentons because they employed a man who had been blacklisted from Organized Baseball, Trenton’s management dropped him.

This iconic figure of the new National League’s barely averted demise died a year later, at age thirty-four.

“I Am Honest, Harry” was originally published in Our Game on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Yes, it was real.

JOSEPH M. OVERFIELD (1916–2000) was a frequent contributor to SABR journals and was my personal friend. He wrote The 100 Seasons of Buffalo Baseball, published in 1985, one of two accomplishments of which Joe was most proud. The other was his lobbying campaign on behalf of Jim “Pud” Galvin for election to the Baseball Hall of Fame, which proved successful in 1965. He loved Buffalo baseball from the his boyhood — and actually recalled seeing Billy Clymer, one of the real redheaded trio, in person: “This writer recalls him clearly, as he managed the 1927 Bisons to a pennant — strutting, chest out, argumentative, flamboyant, just as Reddy Clammer had been in the Zane Grey story.” Joe wrote this story for me in The National Pastime winter edition of 1985; it appears here courtesy of SABR.

ZANE GREY POSSESSES “no merit whatsoever either in style or in substance,” wrote Burton Rascoe, the brilliant but acerbic New York literary critic. And this was the view of another critic, Heywood Broun: “The substance of any two Zane Grey books could be written upon the back of a postage stamp.”

The public disagreed. According to the authorized biography of Grey written by Frank Gruber in 1970, the 85 books he wrote sold 100 million copies. Millions more saw the 100 movies based on his books.

Most of Grey’s books were about the American West, but those he wrote about deep sea fishing and on his world travels were widely read as well. Often forgotten is the fact he wrote numerous baseball stories that gained wide popularity among young readers. Grey’s short story “The Redheaded Outfield” is one of the most famous and widely read baseball stories ever written. Published by the McClure Syndicate in 1915, it was reissued in 1920 along with ten other baseball stories under the title The Redheaded Outfield and Other Stories.

It is not surprising that Grey wrote about baseball. He started to play as a youngster in Zanesville, Ohio, where he was born January 31, 1875. It has been suggested that he was forced to excel in sports to overcome the stigma of the name his mother had given him, Pearl Gray. Eventually he dropped the Pearl and assumed his middle name, Zane, and at the same time changed his surname from Gray to Grey. As a teenager he was recognized as one of Zanesville’s better young pitchers. Equally adept as a ballplayer was his younger brother, whose unusual first name, Romer, seems somewhat prophetic for one destined to attain a degree of fame as an outfielder in professional baseball.

When the Gray family moved to Columbus in 1890, the brothers’ baseball horizons broadened. Both joined the Capitols, a strong amateur nine, for whom Pearl soon became the star pitcher. A scout for the University of Pennsylvania watched him defeat Denison College of Granville, Ohio, whose star pitcher was Danny Daub, a future major leaguer. Penn offered him a baseball scholarship, and to satisfy his dentist father he decided to enter the dental school. After barely passing his entrance examinations, he began his college career in 1892. His graduation in 1896 was by the slimmest of margins.

Undistinguished as he was in the classroom, he more than made up for it on the diamond. He played college baseball for four years, first as a pitcher and then as an outfielder. In 1896 he helped Penn defeat the New York Giants in an exhibition game, and then in the last game of the season he hit a home run with one man on in the last of the ninth to defeat the University of Virginia. Helped financially by his father and by Romer, who had already started his professional baseball career, Grey set up a dental practice in New York City in 1896. Since the income from his practice was small, or possibly because he much preferred baseball to dentistry, he continued to play baseball in the succeeding summers. The entire story of Grey’s professional baseball activity is somewhat shrouded in mystery. Biographer Jean Karr writes that he played in the Eastern, Tri-State, and Michigan State Leagues, but cites no years and no cities. Gruber’s book paints another picture. He wrote: “Pearl was sorely tempted to turn professional but he knew it would be the end of his dream of becoming a writer.” [A fuller account of his many professional clubs may be found here: https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/zane-greys-the-young-pitcher-an-odd-baseball-novel-e249dcc723a5]

According to the Grey obituary in the Sporting News, he played for Wheeling in the Iron and Oil League in 1895, Fort Wayne of the Interstate League in 1896, and Toronto of the Eastern League in 1899. SABR members Vern Luse and Robert Hoie have uncovered some pertinent data. Luse found an item in Sporting Life, April 15, 1896, reporting that Pearl Zane Gray had signed with Jackson of the Interstate League. Hoie has found he played for Newark of the Atlantic League in 1898, batting .277 in 38 games. The haziness of his baseball career notwithstanding, his exposure to the game was such that it was only natural he should write about it. His first substantial check came from The Shortstop, published by A.C. McClurg of Chicago in 1909. Another success was The Young Pitcher, in which the author, transformed into “Ken Ward,” is the hero and brother Reddie Grey is the shortstop. A few years later he wrote “The Redheaded Outfield,” starring Red Gilbat, Reddy Clammer, and Reddie Ray of the Rochester Stars of the Eastern League.

Two of the redheads were trouble personified. “Gilbat was nutty and his average was .371. The man was a jack-o-Iantern, a will-o-the-wisp, a weird, long-legged, redhaired phantom.” Clammer was a grandstand player “who made circus catches, circus stops and circus steals, always strutting, posing, talking, arguing and quarreling.” Reddie Ray, on the other hand, “was a whole game of baseball in himself, batting .400 and leading the league.” “Together,” wrote Grey, “they made up the most remarkable outfield in minor league baseball.”

The story revolves around a single crucial game between the Stars and the Providence Grays, a game in which the Stars’ manager Delaney (first name not given) flirts with apoplexy before it is over. First, Gilbat is playing ball with some kids four blocks away and is rounded up only as the game is about to start. In an early inning Clammer is forced to make a onehanded catch (a no-no in those days) because his other hand is filled with the peanuts he is munching on. Then Gilbat, enraged by some remarks about the color of his hair, leaps into the stands to battle the hecklers and is put out of the game. In the sixth Clammer crashes into the wall in making one of his circus catches and is knocked cold. “I’ll bet he’s dead,” moans Delaney. He revives but is through for the day. With no substitutes available for Gilbat or Clammer, the Stars are forced to play the last three innings with just one outfielder, Reddie Ray, “whose lithe form gave the suggestion of stored lightning.” It comes down to the last of the ninth, the bases are full, the Stars are down by three and Reddie Ray is at the plate. He smashes one to right center for an inside the park home run and victory for the Stars.

“My Gawd!” exclaimed Delaney, “wasn’t that a finish! I told you to watch them redheads.”

Such was the Redheaded Outfield in fiction. In fact, it was the outfield of the 1897 Buffalo Bisons of the Eastern League, not of the Rochester Stars. In the story Gilbat, Clammer, and Ray make up the redheaded trio; in fact, their names were Larry Gilboy, Billy Clymer, and Romer (R.C. or Reddie) Grey, the author’s younger brother. In the story the harassed manager is one Delaney; in fact, the manager was Jack Rowe, a hard-bitten veteran of the baseball wars who had been a member of the famed Big Four (with Dan Brouthers, Deacon White, and Hardie Richardson) of Buffalo’s National League days. Such a dramatic game as described by Grey was never played by the 1897 Bisons. Closest to it was a game played against Scranton on August 5 when the Bisons rallied in the last of the ninth for a comeback win. Clymer and Grey participated in the rally with hits, but the tying and winning runs were driven in by non-redheaded third baseman Ed Greminger.

In the story Grey calls it the greatest outfield ever assembled in the minor leagues; in fact, that would be stretching the truth. But who can say it was not the most unusual? People who know about such things tell us there is one chance in nineteen of being a redhead, which makes the emergence of three redheads in one outfield on one minor league team the longest of long shots.

Perhaps not the greatest, but they were good nonetheless. “Fast and sure, both in the field and at bat,” wrote a Buffalo reporter. The headline in the Express after the Bisons’ opening day win at Springfield was: “REDHEADS GREAT PLAYING!” In the game account we are told that “the redheaded outfield distinguished itself by covering every inch of ground,” and that “Gilboy stood the fans on their heads with a spectacular onehanded catch off the bat of Dan Brouthers.” In game two of the season, Bill (“Derby Day”) Clymer was the star, “catching seven balls that were labeled for hits.” On May 8 at Scranton, Gilboy made an acrobatic catch, called “far and away the best catch ever seen at Athletic Park.” After a game at Wilkes-Barre, a writer called them great, “as good as any outfield in the game,” then added: “Clymer and Gilboy were really sensational. They made some of the most startling plays ever seen in Wilkes-Barre. Both have evidently been with a circus.”

When the Bisons opened at home on May 16 against Rochester, they were in first place with an 8–3 record. The highlight of the first game was a miraculous onehanded catch by Clymer, which he topped off by doing a complete flip-flop. On Memorial Day Clymer provided the one bright spot in what the Express described as an “execrable game” by the Bisons, by snaring a long drive off the bat of McHale of Toronto and then crashing into the fence, just as in the Grey story. According to the Express, “It was the most thrilling out seen here this season.” Clymer was applauded to the skies when he came immediately to the bat (as so often happens after a spectacular fielding play), and he responded by slashing a hit to left. Not to be outdone by Clymer and Gilboy, Reddie Grey, on June 26 in a game at Rochester, raced to right center to make a onehanded catch of a sinking liner hit by Henry Lynch. His momentum was so great that he turned head over heels after he made the catch.

And so it went all season, with visiting players and managers marveling at the play of the three redheads.

And they were far from slouches at the bat. Gilboy, while not a long-ball hitter (one triple and two home runs for the year), was a gem of consistency. He hit safely in twenty-eight of the first thirty games and then after a couple of blanks proceeded to hit in fourteen straight games. For the season he totaled 201 hits (second only to Brouthers’ 225), scored 110 runs, hit 44 doubles, stole 26 bases, and batted .350.

Reddie Grey, called by the Express writer “the perambulating suggestion of the aurora borealis,” played every inning of the Bisons’ 134 games, batting .309, with 167 hits, 29 doubles, 13 triples and 2 home runs. In a game against Scranton in which he was the hitting star, he was, in the quaint practice of that day, presented with a bouquet of flowers as he came to the plate. He responded by doubling to left. Clymer, the most brilliant of the three in the field, was the weakest with the stick. He batted just .279 on 154 hits, but his extra-base totals were strong — 32 doubles, 5 triples, and 8 home runs. Five of his homers came in a twelve-day period beginning on August 12 and caused the Express writer to inquire: “We wonder what oculist Clymer has seen?” Clymer’s fielding average was phenomenal for those days — .969 with just 14 errors. As for the others, Grey fielded .915 and Gilboy .913.

Spurred by the redheads, the Bisons were in the pennant race most of the year, holding first place as late as August 14. A late August slump, however, saw them drop to third by the end of the month. This was where they finished, a disappointing ten games behind first-place Syracuse and four games behind Toronto. As the team began to fade, so did the early-season euphoria. After a loss to Toronto, the Express said, “There are players goldbricking and the fans know who they are.” And then the next day, after another loss: “The infield played like a sieve. Could some players be playing for their releases?” First baseman and captain Jim Fields was abused so severely from the stands after making an error that he asked Manager Rowe for his release, which was not granted. In September, after three straight losses to Springfield, the Express writer, warming to the task, wrote: “The Eastern League is a beanbag league, just where the Bisons belong. They are playing the type of baseball that made Denmark odiferous in the days of Hamlet.”

The 1897 season, which had started on such an optimistic note, came to a merciful end on September 22 with gloom and pessimism pervading the atmosphere. Owner Jim Franklin complained that he was losing money (“This has been no Klondike for me”), the press was vitriolic, the fans were disgruntled, the Eastern League was rocky, and the Western League of Ban Johnson was casting covetous eyes on Buffalo. (Actually, Buffalo did join the Western League in 1899.) But spring has been known to wash away the depressions of falls and winters, and so it was in Buffalo as the 1898 baseball season approached. But what of the fabled redheaded outfield of 1897? Surprisingly, it was destined for a one-year stand. Clymer, who had been with the Bisons since 1894, was the first to go, being shipped to Rochester on March 11. Five days later the Express announced: “A Chromatic Deal — Grey for White.” In an even exchange of outfielders, Reddie Grey had been sent to Toronto for Jack White. Only Gilboy remained. Not only was he coming back, but he was to get a raise, as well. Word from his home in Newcastle, Pa., was that “he had spent the winter as one of the leaders of the gay [old connotation] society.” When he arrived in Buffalo in early April, the Courier noted that “the most prominent thing on Main Street was Gilboy’s summer dawn hair, topped with a white hat.”

Billy Clymer remained in the game for many years as a player and manager, returning to Buffalo in 1901, 1913, 1914, and from 1926 to 1930. This writer recalls him clearly, as he managed the 1927 Bisons to a pennant — strutting, chest out, argumentative, flamboyant, just as Reddy Clammer had been in the Zane Grey story. Clymer’s managerial record is remarkable. He managed twenty-three complete seasons and parts of six others, all in the minors, compiling 2122 wins and 1762 losses for a percentage of .546. He won seven pennants and had an equal number of second-place finishes. Counting only the complete seasons, his record shows just three second-division finishes. He died in Philadelphia, December 26, 1936, at the age of 63. The Macmillan Encyclopedia shows he played just three major league games, those with Philadelphia of the American Association in 1891. Reddie Grey played in the Eastern League with good success until 1903, performing for Toronto, Rochester, Worcester, and Montreal. With Rochester in 1901, he led the league in home runs with 12. In The History of the International League: Part 3, author David F. Chrisman picked him as the league’s most valuable player for that year. According to the Macmillan Encyclopedia, Grey never played in the major leagues. This is disputed by SABR member Al Kermisch, who maintains that Grey played a game for Pittsburgh on May 28, 1903, but was confused with another Grey and therefore has not been listed as a major league player. [This situation was remedied long ago, and Reddy Grey does have his entry in the MLB Player Registers. — jt] Once out of baseball, he followed his father and brother into dentistry, but eventually gave it up to become his brother’s secretary, adviser, and companion on his world travels. A strong fraternal relationship existed between Romer and Zane throughout their lives. Zane never forgot that it was R.C., along with his father, who helped him financially when he was setting up his dental practice in New York and that it was R.C. who gave him encouragement and monetary assistance when he was struggling to establish himself as a writer. Zane showed his esteem for his younger brother by naming his first son Romer. R.C. died in 1934 at age 59, one year before Zane too passed on.

Little is known about the third member of the redheaded triumvirate, Lawrence Joseph Gilboy. He lasted with the Bisons only until May 27, 1898, when he was released outright because, in the words of owner Franklin, “He was worse than useless when he got on the lines.” He signed with Syracuse, played only a few days, was released, played for Utica and Palmyra of the New York State League and for Youngstown of the Interstate. There is no record that he played after 1898. It was a strange and abrupt ending to a career that had started so brilliantly. There was a note in the Express that he was entering Niagara University to study medicine. The school cannot find that he ever enrolled. Such is the story of three minor league outfielders who would have long since been forgotten, were it not for the color of their hair.

Zane Grey’s Redheaded Outfield was originally published in Our Game on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

He played with two African Americans at Adrian, Michigan

Last week I published three Zane Grey stories (yes, The Man of the West had been a professional baseball player) at Our Game. You could look ’em up. While poking around in old newspapers for evidence of when and where the Potboiler King might have played besides the University of Pennsylvania, I noted that in 1895 he was playing left field for the Findlay, Ohio club — as “Zane”; his brother Romer (“Reddy”), the center fielder, got to keep his last name. At season’s end, Findlay became embroiled in a dispute with the Adrian, Michigan club over who really won the pennant of the Michigan State League.

Adrian!

No, not Sylvester Stallone’s plaintive cry for his beloved in Rocky … but the very Adrian club for which Honus Wagner had played during a peripatetic rookie year in professional baseball that took him from Steubenville to Akron to Mansfield to Adrian and, finally, Warren. Did Findlay’s Zane Grey ever play in a game against Honus Wagner?

The man who might have known is the late A.D. Suehsdorf, longtime editor and the author of The Great American Baseball Scrapbook. When I was the editor of The National Pastime, a publication I created for SABR 35 years ago, he wrote this incredibly detailed story for the Winter 1987 edition. Never before available on the web, it appears here courtesy of SABR.

DURING THE SUMMER OF 1895, John Peter Wagner — not yet known as “Honus” or “Hans,” nor yet as a shortstop — played at least seventy-nine games for teams at Steubenville, Akron, and Mansfield, Ohio; Adrian, Michigan, and Warren, Pennsylvania. He rapped out at least 91 hits in 253 known at-bats for an overall average of .360.

The numbers are approximate, for reasons that will be explained, but they are a factual beginning to the hitherto unsubstantiated, or erroneously reported, record of Wagner’s first season in professional baseball.

Gaps in the great man’s stats have occurred through a variety of circumstances. His leagues — Inter-State, Michigan State, and Iron & Oil — adhered to the National Agreement. They were acknowledged in the annual Reach and Spalding guides and their organizational details were noted by Sporting Life, but by and large their statistics were ignored. Two of Wagner’s leagues and three of his teams collapsed while he was with them, leaving only random evidence of their existence. Contemporary newspapers, although the principal sources for this article, were erratic in their coverage and scoring.

Discrepancies in the available box scores raise the possibility that Wagner actually had 93 hits, which would improve his average to .368. There also were eleven games in which he made a total of 15 more hits, but in which, unhappily, at-bats were not scored. (His average at-bats in the games for which box scores are complete was 3.83; for those eleven games that would be, conceivably, thirty-five. Add these to 253, and the 15 hits to 91 or 93, and you reach hypothetical averages of .368 and .375.) Finally, there were twelve games, including four exhibitions, in which Wagner probably played for which no boxes have so far been found.

Honus himself was a fount of misinformation when pressed for biographical detail many years after the event. In an early episode of a nearly interminable life story run by the Pittsburgh Gazette-Times in 1924, a boxed tabulation of the Wagner record carries a BA of .365 in 20 games at Steubenville and .369 in 65 games at Warren. Both, Honus claimed, were league-leading averages.

Actually, he played a mere seven games for Steubenville before the franchise was shifted to Akron, where he played five games more. He did hit .367 for Steubenville (or .400 if he deserves an extra hit one box score gave him) and .304 for Akron. Twelve games, however, are obviously too few for him to have been league batting champion.

If he hit .369 at Warren, it was not from 92 hits in 249 ABs in sixty-five games, as cited by the Gazette-Times. Wagner played his first game for Warren on July 11 and his last on September 11, a total of sixty-three days during which he missed twenty-one because of an injury to his throwing arm and several others because no ball was played on Sundays. In the playing days available to him, only thirty-four league games were scheduled (plus ten exhibitions), hardly enough to support a claim to league batting honors. From the numbers I have at hand, I believe he played all thirty-four and batted about .324.

For all the uncertainty, a close look at Wagner’s rookie season gives us a fascinating look at a youngster developing in the minor leagues of ninety years ago. The enormous skills of his National League years-power hitting, exceptional range afield, base stealing ability-already were apparent. A reporter for the Mansfield Shield seems to have printed it first and said it best: “Oh! for nine men like Wagner.”

In 1895, John Wagner had just turned twenty-one and had been playing hometown ball around Mansfield, Pa. — now Carnegie — a coal-and-steel suburb of Pittsburgh, for some six or seven years. He was working in the barber shop of his brother Charley, presumably as an apprentice, but mostly sweeping up, running errands, brushing stray hairs off the customers’ suits, and trying to get loose to play ball.

He escaped the barber shop forever when George L. Moreland, owner and manager of the Steubenville club, wired him an offer of$35 a month. Moreland, who moved in Pittsburgh baseball circles, may have seen Honus as a kid, playing in the Allegheny County League, or he may have asked his third baseman, Al Wagner, Honus’s elder brother, ifhe knew any young prospects. Or maybe both.

At a Pittsburgh spring training camp in the mid-thirties, Moreland, by then a baseball statistician and historian, recalled Al saying: “I’ve got a brother who is a peach. He’s loafing now, and mebbe you could get him to play for you. If so,you won’t go wrong on him. He’s a great ballplayer.”

John tried to squeeze an extra $5 a month and got a wire back: “If you can’t accept thirty-five you had better stay home.”

Abashed, he jumped aboard a late-night freight hauling coal and was in Steubenville by 5 the following morning.

Wagner’s contract has several point of interest. First, he signed as “William” Wagner and thereafter became known as “Will” throughout the league. William was the name of still another ball-playing Wagner brother, and old Hans occasionally said he signed that way because he thought William was the Wagner Steubenville wanted. Well, perhaps, although that lets the air out of Al’s recommendation. On the other hand, Manager Moreland noted that the contract was received February 10, which was a mite early for third-baseman Wagner to be hanging around Steubenville offering advice on young prospects. Honus’s comment on the contract obviously was much later; maybe Moreland’s was, too.

The club obligates itself to pay expenses on the road, while charging the player for his uniform and shoes, a not-unusual practice in those days. Les Biederman’s 1950 biography of Wagner, The Flying Dutchman, has 76-year-old Honus recalling with amusement that $32 of his first month’s salary went for two uniforms and a pair of shoes.

Steubenville’s nine seems not to have had a nickname, but it had handsome “Yale gray suits,” with cap, belt and stockings of blue. On the left breast of the shirt was the letter S. A “decidedly pretty effect,” said the Steubenville Daily Herald.

Steubenville was one of seven Ohio teams in the Inter-State League. Wheeling, West Virginia, the eighth, justified the name. All the clubs were in a 275-by-80 mile area. Steubenville’s scheduled road games would have involved about 2,200 miles of travel.

Like many leagues of its time, the Inter-State began bravely, with well-attended games and intense local rivalries, then foundered amid turmoil and confusion, which led the acerbic reporter for the Shield to dub it the Interchangeable League.

“Will” Wagner appears in the Steubenville lineup for the first time on April 20, an exhibition victory over Holy Ghost College. He played right field, batted seventh, and went 2 for 5. (E. Vern Luse has backstopped my Steubenville, Akron, and Warren numbers by generously sharing his research into Inter-State and Iron & Oil League statistics.)

The regular Inter-State season opened at home on May 2 with a wild 29–11 win over Canton. Will was in left field, again batted seventh, and went 1 for 6, a homer in the fourth with a man aboard. He also got an outfield assist for nailing at the plate a runner trying to score from second on a single.

On May 4 he stole three bases against Canton, an individual effort not usually credited in game summaries, but available here because the paper published a play-by-play story.

On May 7, with the Kenton Babies in town, Will started in left and went 3 for 5, including a homer and a triple. He also struck out four in two shutout innings of relief — a short “row of post holes,” as scoreboard zeroes were sometimes called in 1895. Always a strong thrower, Wagner had done some impressive relief work in preseason exhibitions, and Manager Moreland may have thought to make a hurler of him.

The following day, in a rain-shortened five-inning contest, Wagner pitched all the way. He gave up six runs and seven hits, including three home runs, but won easily as Steubenville teed off on Kenton pitching for 26 runs on 22 hits, two of them Wagner doubles.

Now considered a pitcher exclusively, Wagner sat out the next game and entered the one following in the sixth, with the Mansfield Kids already well ahead. He allowed two runs in two-plus innings.

Meanwhile, Moreland had telegraphed the league president, Howard H. Ziegler, requesting permission to transfer his club to Akron, pleading inadequate support by Steubenville. “Akron has the baseball fever in the most malignant form,” said the Ohio State Journal, “and has promised Moreland to receive his nine with open arms.” Belatedly, Steubenville began to raise money to keep the team in town and urged people in neighboring communities to come by streetcar and support the club.

President Ziegler, always mentioned scornfully by Mansfield’s Shield as a dilatory and do-nothing leader, acted promptly in this instance. He approved the move over the weekend and by Monday, May 13, the team represented Akron.

The first game in its new setting was a rousing 21–5 win over Findlay, whose location at the center of the state’s oil and gas producing region earned it the nickname “Oil Field Pirates.” Wagner, back in left field, had three RBIs with a homer and two doubles in six at-bats. “The Wagner brothers are little,” said the State Journal in a sidebar, “but the way they hit the ball is something awful.”

In fact, the more experienced Al was judged to be the more promising player. Batting cleanup in thirteen games for Steubenville/Akron, he had 26 hits in 56 ABs for an overwhelming average of .464. He also scored 25 runs. Neither man, however, was physically small.

On the 17th, Will pitched a complete game at Canton’s Pastime Park, winning 14–7 and contributing three hits and a run. He allowed seven hits, including two doubles and a homer, walked four, hit two, and had a wild pitch. Not an artistic success. Even so, because of five Akron errors only one earned run was charged against him.

Akron’s final game was a 5–5 tie in the seventh when one of its players was called out attempting to steal third. A violent protest erupted, and when Moreland refused Canton’s request to remove an abusive player, the single umpire gave him five minutes to comply and then forfeited the game to Canton.

(Unaccountably, at-bats were not scored for this game. Since Wagner went hitless, and because of the rumpus probably did not bat in the seventh, I have arbitrarily given him three ABs.)

Following the game, Akron “went to pieces,” and its place in the league was awarded to Lima, OH, whose team, inevitably, was called the Beans. Canton immediately signed Al Wagner. Will was picked up by Mansfield. Claude Ritchey, the excellent shortstop, went to the Warren

Wonders, where Honus would catch up with him again.

Honus was in the Mansfield lineup May 20, batting second and listed as ‘”J. Wagner.” Lacking a shortstop of Ritchey’s caliber, Mansfield’s manager, Frank O’Brien, gave the versatile Wagner his first try at the position.

He played through June 8, a total of seventeen games for which box scores of thirteen are available. The missing four involve games with the Twin Cities — Uhrichsville and Dennison, manufacturing towns adjoining each other on a bend of the Tuscarawas River — Cy Young country south of Canton. One game, at Mansfield May 29, was skipped because the Shield did not publish on Memorial Day, and got only a paragraph in the issue of the 31st, which also had to report the holiday doubleheader. The other three — June 6, 7, and 8 at the Twin Cities, which meant the park at the fairgrounds, several blocks from beautiful downtown Uhrichsville — are forever lost. The Shield, like many small-town papers of the time, did not send a reporter on road trips, and there was no local coverage because the Uhrichsville Chronicle did not start publication in 1895 until after the baseball season: The summary under the line score for one of these three credits Wagner with a homer, so there is at least one AB, run, and RBI to add to his totals.

As it happened, Wagner did well when his team was thriving and tailed off when it slumped. While the Kids were winning five of the first six he played for them, his average was a fantastic .467. When they lost ten of the next eleven, he dwindled to .313. All told, he had a countable twenty-four hits in a traceable sixty-two at-bats for a handsome .387 average. (It might even have been .403. In one game — again with the wretched Twins — the box gives him one for 5, but the summary credits him with a homer and a double. So, maybe he had twenty-five hits.)

In a 14–10 loss to Canton (and Brother Al), he had two home runs and three RBIs, then pitched relief in the sixth, evidently shutting down the Dueberites, as Canton was called, with one run in two innings plus. “Wagner Covered Himself with Glory,” said the Shield’s headline bank. And somewhat less kindly, for this could be a harshly critical paper: third baseman Jack Dunn “Loses His Head and His Stupid Playing Alone was sufficient [no cap] to Lose the Game.”

There is no indication of the distances to the outfield fences. One of Wagner’s homers was described as “a hot shot deep into center” and the other as an inside-the-park drive that the center fielder was slow getting to.

With the glove he did less well: ten errors in eight games at short, one in two games in center, four in three games at third. This was called ‘’yellow’’ support in those days. The etymology is unknown, although it probably derives from the many pejorative uses of the word. Here it obviously means sloppy play that lets the side down.

Wagner was nothing if not willing. In one game at short he drifted into the center fielder’s territory for a fly and had to be called off. Another postgame note had the second baseman, Billy Otterson, a veteran who had played with the Brooklyn team in the old American Association, chewing him out for backing into the left fielder.

Against Canton on May24, he nearly put the Kids under all by himself. In the seventh, his “rotten fielding” allowed a batter to reach first. This so occupied the umpire’s attention that a Canton player, McGuirk — “McSquirt the robber,” the outraged Shield called him — “cut third base by at least twenty feet and the umpire allowed the score to count because ‘he didn’t see it.’”

The Kids went into the ninth leading 7–4 until two Wagnerian errors enabled Canton to tie it up.

“The agony of the rooters was painful, but it couldn’t be helped. Smith [Harry, a catcher who would be Honus’ teammate at Warren and for six years at Pittsburgh] was safe on Wagner’s [second] error and the rooters were ready to faint and were cussing Wagner in language which the pastors of Christian congregations do not use, but Smith was thrown out at second and the church members, who had been swearing like pirates, breathed easier.”

Mansfield rallied for nine runs in the tenth and won, 16–9. Wagner’s contribution was a walk.

With victory in hand, the Shield was more forgiving. “J. Wagner’s three errors yesterday,” it said, “were sheer awkwardness, but Wagner played a great all-around game and accepted chances outside of his territory which resulted in some of the errors marked against him.”

With 26 putouts, 43 assists, and 15 errors, Honus’ fielding average was a painful .821.

As May ended, the league’s perilous condition became obvious. Canton disbanded and Al Wagner and Harry Smith quickly jumped to Warren. The collapse put Mansfield in a bind. Well entrenched in last place with a record of 8 and 23, the club now faced an idle week through the loss of six scheduled games with the nonexistent Dueberites. The end came June 14. “LOCK THE GATES,” read the Shield’s one-column headline. “The Jig is Up with Mansfield for This Season.”

Al, looking out for little brother, wired John to join him at Warren. “Will come for sixty-five [dollars per month],” Honus wired back. “Send ticket.”

That was too steep for Warren, and Wagner moved on to the Adrian Demons of the Michigan State League — at $50 a month.

The long jump of an untraveled rube from Ohio to Michigan has a simple explanation. In 1949, Honus told Jim Long, then the Pirates’ PR man, that the Mansfield owner,”a man named Taylor,” said his brother ran a hardware store and a baseball team in Michigan and would have a spot for a hard-hitting youngster.

This time Wagner’s memory was on track. Mr. Taylor would have had to be William H., the father of Rolla L. Taylor of Adrian, who did, indeed, run a hardware store that was known throughout Lenawee County for its reliability. Moreover, Rolla was a prime mover in the consortium of Adrian businessmen who financed the Demons. He served as club secretary, managed the team, and selected as mascot his little son, Grandpa’s namesake.

William’s connection with baseball can be established only circumstantially today, but he was a member of a pioneer Ohio family, earned a captaincy in the Civil War, and between 1885 and 1895 was a partner in a Mansfield cracker factory which evidently was one of the regional bakeries amalgamated into the National Biscuit Company. He sounds distinguished and wealthy enough to have backed a small-town ball club.

Honus also told Long that, although he was a stripling with twenty-nine games’ worth of professional experience, Adrian appointed him manager. Not so. Rolla ran the show.

The Michigan State League was a well-organized, well-run circuit of six clubs, located generally in the lower half of the State. Besides Adrian, which was also known as the Reformers, there were the Lansing Senators, Owosso Colts, Port Huron Marines, Battle Creek Adventists, and Kalamazoo Kazoos, Zooloos, or Celery Eaters, celery being a big local crop.

Adrian, the Maple City, performed at Lawrence Park and Wagner appeared in his first game there on June 20, playing second base and batting cleanup. In the first inning, the semi-weekly Michigan Messenger reported, Wagner “made the greatest slide for first probably ever made on the grounds, but in an effort to steal second his great slide failed to save him. He played on second base and did good work.”

It wasn’t all heroics, however. In his third game, he “took the stick with bases full and had an oppportunity to distinguish himself, which he unfortunately did by striking out, and retiring the side.” He contributed a double and a triple later on, and Adrian beat Owosso in ten, 12–11.

Against Battle Creek the following day he came to bat with two on in the first and “almost lost the ball over between left and center fielders for a triple.” Not bad afield, either, according to the Daily Times: “Some of the ground stops he made were handsome plays in every respect.”

In a game against Port Huron, the best and worst of the young Wagner’s abilities were made evident. In the first he “made a beautiful stop” to retire the side with the bases full. In the third, again with bases full, a Marine drove the ball to right field, and a “wild throw of Wagner” — a relay, no doubt — allowed three Marines to score. Finally, in the eighth with three on, Port Huron “sent a red hot grounder to Wagner, who plays all over his field and half of the adjoining sections, [and who] made the best stop of the day and retired the side.”

All told, available stats give him 36 putouts, 46 assists, and 10 errors for .891.

For hitting, I am relying on Ray Nemec’s thoroughgoing research into the Michigan State League’s 1895 season, which he assembled some years ago. He credits Wagner with 27 hits in 70 ABs for .386. I have confirmed fourteen of Wagner’s sixteen games and am persuaded that the missing two would match Ray’s numbers.

An interesting aspect of Honus’ experience at Adrian was the presence of two excellent black players on the Demons’ roster, another piece of history authoritatively researched by Nemec. These were George H. Wilson, a 19-year-old righthander, and Vasco Graham, his catcher. Wilson appeared in 37 games — 30 complete — winning 29 and losing 4. He pitched 298 innings, allowed 289 hits and 173 runs. He struck out 280 and walked only 96. He hit .327 in fifty-two games as pitcher and occasional outfielder. Graham played in seventy-seven and hit .324, with 19 doubles and 18 SB. I encountered one reference to them as Adrian’s “watermelon battery,” but the town’s, and the league’s, tolerance seems to have been exceptional and newspaper admiration of their talents genuine.

The two were acquired from the Page Fence Giants, a highly successful team of black barnstormers organized by the legendary john W. “Bud” Fowler and sponsored by Adrian’s Page Woven Wire Fence Company. Fowler and many other players from the Page Fence Giants also played for the Demons, though not during Wagner’s few weeks.(“The Adrians signed half the Page Fence Giants”; see clip below.) A measure of the Giants’ prowess can be gained from an account of an exhibition game between the Demons and the Giants eleven days before Wagner’s arrival. Watched by a crowd of 1,400, the Giants walloped the Demons, 20–10. Fowler, in right field, went 5 for 6. Sol White was at second base, got two hits, and took part in three double plays.

In later years, Honus laid his departure from Adrian to homesickness. There may have been more to it than that. During the exhibition with the Giants it was evident that some of the Demons were in a truculent mood. Referring to their haphazard play, the Messenger observed: “No club can play a good game unless harmony can prevail among them. When a set of men get to kicking about this and that, and seem dissatisfied, it is time they were called to a halt, and from all appearances the greater part of the team needed a calling down…. If Mr. [ J. T.] Derrick is manager of the club [he was not, but as pitcher and outfielder may have been field captain], the players under him should be made to obey….” Did this have something to do with the Demons’ reactions to getting shell-shocked by blacks?

In July, twelve days after Wagner’s departure, the Messenger reported: “Derrick was released this morning. There seems to have been a strong feeling among members of the club against him in some way, with the result that there was a greater or less lack [sic] of harmony in the organization. It is strongly hinted that Wagner left largely on account of that feeling.” What feeling? One could wish that the reporter wrote plainer, more felicitous English.

In a retrospective interview with Manager Rolla Taylor in 1930, the Adrian Daily Telegram offered this paraphrase: “Wagner never ‘hitched’ so very well with the Adrian team. He didn’t like to play with Adrian’s colored battery. It was thought this had something to do with his quick departure.”

The trail ends there. Efforts to elaborate, or refute, the story through contemporary sources have been futile. I found no one in Adrian today aware of the history, let alone the personal circumstances. Perhaps it is less a comment on Honus than on the perniciousness and relentlessness of baseball’s color bar, which would soon be absolute and persist for more than half a century.

Joining Warren was like old home week for Honus. Five of his mates from the disbanded Steubenville club were in the lineup. Aside from Brother Al at third, there were Claude Ritchey at short; Dave “Toots” Barrett, a workhorse lefthander; Jakie Bullach (Bullock in Steubenville boxes), who could play second or the outfield; and outfielder-catcher Jimmy Cooper.

For all the talent, the Wonders were fifth in the Iron & Oil League, two games under .500, when Wagner arrived.

The I&O comprised six small cities in the northwestern corner of Pennsylvania, plus two refugees from the defunct Inter-State: the obscurantist Twin City Twins and Wheeling’s Mountaineers (or Stogies), whose factotum, also headed for the big leagues, was Edward G. Barrow. It had the usual dropouts and replacements, but seemed on the way to completing its split-season schedule.

Warren’s home field was Recreation Park, which the Pittsburg (no “h” in those days) Post called the finest in the league. In his first game there on July 11, Wagner had his one and only trial at first base. He batted fourth, following Al, and produced a double and a stolen base. The following day he was in right field and the day after that at short and batting second. He got four hits, including a home run, scored three, batted in three, and stole two bases. He had six assists afield and the Warren Evening Democrat told its readers: “John Wagner covers a great deal of ground at short.”

Of his first nine games, eight involved the same opponent representing two towns. Four were with Sharon (Pa.), two of them played as exhibitions after the franchise folded and was transferred to the curious little town of Celoron (N.Y.). Located, with its large neighbor, Jamestown, by Lake Chautauqua, Celoron was at the heart of the era’s famous “Chautauquas” — summertime tent meetings where huge crowds gathered for educational lectures, concerts, and revivalist sermons by evangelists. (A year later, a star attraction would be the ex-ballplayer, Bill Sunday.) Two of Warren’s four games with the no-nickname Celorons also were exhibitions as the league marked time before starting the split season’s second half. The ninth game, still another exhibition, was a loss at Warren, before a crowd of 1,000, to Connie Mack’s National League-leading Pittsburg Pirates.

As for Wagner’s performance, statistics are available for seventeen games, half of those he played, including exhibitions. Several of the I&O League towns reported at-bats irregularly or not at all. This affects nine games in which he got 15 hits. For eight others, particularly those with Celoron, there is no coverage whatever. “The Jamestown people,” said the Warren Evening Democrat, “take a great deal more interest in balloon ascensions than they do in baseball.” This was an unseemly gripe, considering that the Democrat was among those that ignored at-bats.

We know for sure that Honus went 22 for 68 in the seventeen games, an average of .324. Fielding stats are complete for all twenty-six scored games: A not very impressive average of .862.

He played right field and third base, eventually taking over there from Al, who shifted to second. (“J. Wagner put up a good game at third … that seems to be a regular Wagner base.”)

Then, on Monday, July 29, the Democrat reported “while running to catch the train at Titusville, John Wagner fell and received a rather severe cut under his right arm. The muscles were not affected but it took several stitches to close up the wound…. It will probably necessitate his being out of the game for a week or so.” Actually, three. He rejoined the team for a game with the Franklin Braves and had a week of action before the league started to disintegrate. Three teams disbanded.

A twelve-game winning streak in Wagner’s absence had moved the Wonders into the league lead, with the strong Wheeling organization some three games behind. When it was clear that the league could not continue, Warren agreed to play a seven-game series at Wheeling to decide the championship.

It was State Fair week at Wheeling, which guaranteed good crowds for the games, even though baseball was playing second fiddle to bike races and Buffalo Bill. One game was scheduled in the morning to avoid a conflict with Bill’s street parade of cowboys and Indians. Another was played at four in the afternoon, after the bike races.

Wheeling won four of the first six games, so that Warren’s victory in the seventh was technically an exhibition for another payday. Wheeling immediately claimed the championship. The Wonders, although hard pressed to ignore their agreement to a decisive series, could not help noting that their season’s record, including the seven at Wheeling, was 26 and 12 for .684, while the Stogies’ 27 and 16 was .630. Warren went on to lose two out of three to New Castle, languishing in third place, which thereupon had the temerity to proclaim itself the league champs. For what it’s worth, the A. G. Spalding Company, in its wisdom, sent a pennant to Wheeling.

Warren’s management wanted to keep the team going. It was only September 12, after all. But there was a small matter of paying the players, who had received nothing since the first of the month. A wrangling negotiation led nowhere and the players voted to go home. Last to leave were Manager Bob Russell and the Wagner boys.

Whatever the statistical confusion of his season, John Peter Wagner was on his way. By August he was beginning to be known as “Hannes,” though not yet as a shortstop. Of the sixty-seven games for which his position is known, only ten were spent at short. He played eighteen at third, seventeen each at second and the outfield, one at first, and five on the mound.

If his fielding left something to be desired, it was not for lack of range or a strong throwing arm. And as a hitter, he already was awesome. He did not escape the notice of “Cousin Ed” Barrow, who would move on to Paterson (N.J.) in 1896 and arrange to have Hannes with him.

Thereafter, it was Louisville, Pittsburgh, and the Hall of Fame.

Honus Wagner’s Rookie Year, 1895 was originally published in Our Game on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Can you solve it? Respond today; look for answer tomorrow

An extremely scarce set of nonsports cards is the N125 “Puzzles” series issued by Honest Long Cut tobacco in 1889. Consisting of 15 picture cards with instructions on the back, the series devilishly provided the answer to each puzzle on the verso of another. Here are a few sample images:

Card №1:

The last card in the set is of most interest to readers of Our Game: “Base Ball Puzzle,” depicted large above, from the Jefferson T. Burdick Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Instructions for solving the puzzle are provided directly below the image.

Some familiarity with the baseball scene in 1889 will be helpful, but not imperative. I thought you might like to try to solve it today, giving your answers in the Responses section below. I promise to supply the answers tomorrow for those who may be too busy with real life to attempt a solution today.

A Base Ball Puzzle from 1889 was originally published in Our Game on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The team is New York (the Giants), encrypted in red.

The bats on the left contain (Jim) O’Rourke and (John) Ward, respectively. Note that the large red letters are required to fill out their names.

The bats on the right spell out Nick Young, president of the National League. Again, note that the large red letters are required to fill out his first and last name.

The catcher’s position encrypts (Buck) Ewing.

The pitcher’s box embeds (Tim) Keefe.

And finally, the second base bag reveals (Danny) Richardson.

A Base Ball Puzzle from 1889: Answers was originally published in Our Game on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Once Great Player Succumbs to Pneumonia — His Parting Remarks to His Friends — His Last Illness — History of His Career, Etc.

This obituary notice appeared in the November 17, 1894 issue of Sporting Life. It came to my notice because I had recalled a timeworn anecdote of his parting words in an earlier Our Game post: “As they carried his stretcher into the hospital, it is said, the attendants tripped and dumped Kelly on the floor. ‘That’s me last slide,’ he said. A few days later the ‘$10,000 Beauty’ died.” [https://goo.gl/3KtsK6] In the story below, the comment is recorded less colorfully, if more plausibly, as “Well, I guess this is the last trip.”

Michael J. Kelly, for years the “King” of base ball players and the pet of the Boston enthusiasts, died of pneumonia at Boston on the night of Nov. 8. The following particulars of his death were telegraphed from Boston on the 9th inst.:

“Kelly came here Monday from his home, at Paterson, N. J., to play an engagement at the Palace Theatre. He caught a slight cold on the boat from New York, but thought little of it. He went to the Plymouth House, the proprietor of which is an old friend of his and a brother Elk. Mr. Anderson noticed that Mike was not well, and put him to bed at once.

“The slight cold, aided by the East wind and murky chill of last Monday, were too much for the player, and he grew worse so rapidly that Dr. Galvin, another old friend, took him to the Emergency Hospital and gave up his private room to him. It was about 2 o’clock Monday afternoon when he first attended Kelly. Then he was breathing with difficulty and was in a critical condition. He did what be could to ease his pain, but his patient did not improve, and at 4 o’clock he made another visit and then stated to Mr. Anderson that pneumonia had set in.

“Kelly did not show any signs of improvement, although he passed a fairly good night. He began to mend after he was taken to the hospital, and on Tuesday and Wednesday seemed to be on the road to recovery, although it was a hard fight all the time. He slept well Wednesday night and Dr. Galvin thought his chances for recovery were excellent. Thursday morning he seemed to get weak and about 11 o’clock a change for the worse was observed. At 11 o’clock he began to sink. It was extremely bard for him to breathe, and the doctors and attendants gave him oxygen gas during the afternoon and evening to relieve him. Toward evening he grew worse and about 8 o’clock lost consciousness.

“Dennis P. Sullivan, one of his Boston friends, and Julian B. Hart, who was one of the Boston Brotherhood and Association backers, were at his bedside when he passed away. He was cheerful during his illness and never complained. Toward the last, however, he felt that the end was coming, and about 6 o’clock said: ‘Well, I guess this is the last trip.’ He was attended by Father Hickey, of St. James’ Roman Catholic Church.

“Mrs. Kelly, who has been staying in a suburb of Allentown, Pa., all summer, was notified by telegraph early Thursday that he was very sick. Her husband requested that she be notified the first day, but the message evidently miscarried, for no answer was received. Mrs. M. Kelly arrived here this evening from Rittersville, Pa., completely prostrated by the news of the death of her husband.”

At a meeting of the Boston Lodge of Elks it was decided that the funeral should be held on Sunday, November 11, at noon. The body lay in state in Elks’ Hall from 9 to 12 o’clock. The interment took place in the Elks’ lot at Mt. Hope Cemetery.

Over 5000 people viewed the remains of Michael J. Kelly, the dead ball player, as they laid in state in Elks’ Hall this morning. The floral tributes were magnificent. They consisted of offerings from the Boston Ball Club, Duffy and McCarthy, of the Boston Club; New York Club, E. B. Talcott, of the New York Club; Mr. and Mrs. A. C. Anson, Chicago; A. G. Spalding, A. J. Reach, Ward and Vokes, George Floyd, Barney Lennon, Wood and Sheppard, the London Gaiety Company Boston Lodge of Elks, Charles H. Hoyt, the playwright; Eddie Foy, Actors’ Protective Union, John Kelly, Michael Griffin of the Brooklyn team, and others.

Among the many prominent people attending were Merritt, Morgan, Murphy and Canavan, of the Cincinnatis; Selee, Duffy, McCarthy, Sullivan, Dolan, Director Billings, of the Boston Club; President Powers, of the Eastern League; Manager Chapman, of Buffalo; Donovan, of Pittsburg; Manager Murray, of Providence; John Kelly and W. H. McGunnigle. Messages of condolence were received from all parts of the country.

Among the prominent Elks present were Grand Exalted Ruler Hay, of Washington; William G. Myers, of Philadelphia, and William H. Hersey, of Cleveland. Simple services were held at St. James’ Church, and the remains were then carried to Mount Hope, where the burial services of the Elks was read.

Mrs. Kelly, who though heavily veiled showed manifest signs of her deep grief, was accompanied by James Kelly, of Paterson, N. J., brother of the deceased. Besides the Boston lodge, officers of Haverhill and Worcester lodges of Elks, a cortege of thirty-five carriages followed the body to the grave.

Mrs. Kelly is left entirely destitute, and the friends of her husband are arranging for a suitable testimonial. A. J. Simmons, № 211 Washington street, Boston, will act as treasurer. Mrs. Kelly and a 4-month-old baby are now in a most awkward position as a result of Kelly’s big heart.

The Dead Man’s Career.

Professional base ball may never again see the like of Michael J. Kelly. Among the hundreds of players who are living in active service to-day and the thousands who have reigned, but are now dead, either to the world or to the diamond, the memory of “The King” stands unique and alone. He was a good ball player in all the adjective implies professionally, a good fellow in a full sense of the worldly phrase, and a good friend. In his earlier days he was as full of tricks at play as in his later days he was full of quips, badinage, sarcasm and repartee. His good-natured “chaff” with spectators placed him a favorite everywhere, which, with his undeniable and widely-recognized merit as a player, made the man a strong card in every city where he appeared.

KELLY’S START IN LIFE.

Michael J. Kelly was born in Troy N. Y., in 1856. He made his first appearance as a player twenty years later with the Olympics of Paterson, N.J. During the latter part of 1877 he was catcher for Jim McCormick in the Buckeyes team of Columbus, and they soon became universally known as the “Jersey battery.” From Columbus Kelly went to the Cincinnati Club, for the season of 1878, playing right field and change catcher. In 1879 he went to California with the Cincinnati-Buffalo Club, and in 1880 he was engaged by the Chicago Club. It was while with the Chicagos that Kelly became famous. He played nearly every position on the team, was a tremendous batter, a daring base runner, and was universally noted for his tricks. As a “kicker” be outclassed every other player in the profession, and great crowds attended the games just to see him argue with the poor, unfortunate umpire.

In 1886 he led the League in batting with a percentage of .370, and for that matter he was always near the top of the list in this respect. Associated with him in the Chicago Club was that famous infield, consisting of Captain Anson, first base; Fred. Pfeffer, second base; Tom Burns, third base; and Ned Williamson, short stop. These men were known as “the stone wall infield,” and never before or since have their equals been produced. With Kelly and Clarkson as the principal battery, the Chicago Club was almost invincible in 1886 and won the championship.

KELLY’S FERTILITY OF RESOURCE.

It was in 1886 that Kelly played his celebrated trick of cutting third base. It happened in a game at Boston when the score stood 3 to 3 in the last half of the ninth inning. Kelly was the first batsman, and got his base on called balls. Anson retired on an infield fly, and Kelly then stole second. Pfeffer rolled a slow ball between Burdock and Morrill, and tried to beat it out. The umpire sprinted along to first to make the decision on what was expected to be a close play, never paying the slightest attention to Kelly. The latter ran half-way to third, and then cut directly across the diamond to the base line between third and home. The crowd began to yell, but the umpire did not turn his head until Mike had slid across the plate. As the umpire had not seen third base cut he could not declare Kelly out, and the game went to Chicago. Another trick that caused comment everywhere was when Kelly stood on the coaching line back of third base, with a man on first, and asked the pitcher to let him see the ball. As a rule the unsuspecting twirler threw the ball over, and Kelly, jumping out of the way, let it roll to the seats, while the man on first would reach second unmolested.

EVENTS IN HIS LIFE.

Kelly was such an attraction in all the League cities that the Boston club in 1887 purchased his release from A. G. Spalding for $10,000 in cash, and Kelly received a salary of $5000. He was billed everywhere as the “$10,000 beauty,” and the attendance in Boston that year was phenomenally large. He played behind the bat and at right field. The next year John Clarkson was purchased from Chicago, too, for $10,000, and he and Kelly were known as the “$20,000 battery.”

Kelly at this time was in the greatest popularity, and everywhere he went was hailed as the “King” of the diamond. He was then not only the shrewdest of catchers, but never failed to turn a trick, which often won for his team an exciting game. He was the hero of the song, “Slide, Kelly, Slide,” and his Boston admirers presented him with a house and lot and a purse in recognition of his services. He also played with Boston in 1888 and 1889.

When the Brotherhood war broke out in 1890, Kelly signed with the Boston Players’ League Club. He was loyal to the cause, as was proven when A. G. Spalding met him in the Astor House by appointment, and, taking $25,000 in cash from his pocket, told Kelly that he could have it if he would desert the Brotherhood and sign with Chicago. But, as much as Kelly needed money, he refused, with the remark:

“Mr. Spalding, I would not break my oath of allegiance to the Brotherlood for all the money in tho world.”

HIS DECLINE.

In 1891 Kelly took charge of the Cincinnati American Association Club, which Al Johnson tried to sell out to the League, but owing to the fight with the League the venture was not a financial success. When the twelve-club League was organized, Mike was assigned to the Boston League team, with which he played good ball in 1892. It was in 1893 that he was released to the New York Club.

When the season of 1893 closed New York returned “Mike” to Boston with thanks, and Boston would not receive him with joy and satisfaction. He was released outright. That act must have gone to “Kel’s” heart like a poisoned dagger. The man who a few years before had commanded $10,000 for his release turned astray from League company! Then his warm friend “Al” Johnson, took him up and made an advertisement of the once great player for his trolley lines in Allentown. Thither Kelly went, with much boasting of the great gain there was in the scheme for him, but all who were close to him knew the once great player’s professional heart was broken. Kelly’s last appearance as a player in a League city was when his Yonkers team defeated the New Yorks on the Polo grounds early last September.

HIS THEATRICAL CAREER.

Kelly could never keep money. He [was not a (? — jt)] dancer and an admittedly bad singer. Kelly always had a mania for the theatrical stage, and he was in his element when he appeared as a “tough” in Hoyt’s “Rag Baby” at a Boston theatre some years ago. After that he doubled up with several variety performers, notably William Jerome, and appeared at various theatres in the big cities. He was a member of Mark Murphy’s company, playing “O’Dowd’s Neighbors,” and was about to go on the road with a variety show when taken ill.

COULD NOT KEEP MONEY.

Kelly could never keep money. He had in his seventeen years of professional life earned thousands of dollars, and spent it almost as fast as he received it. He was what is known as a gay sport. His weakness was the race track and faro; he never played poker. His weakness for racing was overpowering, and many has been the game of ball which he “jumped” to get a whack at the bookmakers. He had warm friends in “Snapper” Garrison and Jockey Fitzpatrick, and when those two were riding successfully he frequently hit the ring hard. The ring had hit him back lately.

In his prime as a ball player Kelly had no equal, unless it was “Buck” Ewing. Therefore, no one could deny him the title of “The King,” for, besides being a great ball player, he was a royal good fellow, with a loyal heart, a sunny disposition and more friends than any man possessed who ever played ball. Two years ago he took his father and mother abroad and visited notable places in Ireland. When he came back he declared that he did not have “cigarette money.” Kelly was popular with everybody, and never had an enemy among the players of his profession. His death will be mourned by thousands of lovers of the national game. May he rest in peace.

Kelly’s Last Trip: The King of Players Put Out by Death was originally published in Our Game on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“A ball game gotten up by a picked nine of American sinners against the world,” by Art Young

My friend Rob Edelman wrote this in the 2015 number of Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game, which I had launched eight years earlier:

“In 1901, political cartoonist, writer, and Republican-turned-socialist Arthur Young (1866–1943) published a book with a drawn-out title: Through Hell with Hiprah Hunt: A Series of Pictures and Notes of Travel Illustrating the Adventures of a Modern Dante in the Infernal Regions; Also Other Pictures of the Same Subterranean World. As for its content, the title tells all; the drawings (which come under such descriptions as “Bribe-taking aldermen,” “The quack doctors,” “Having fun with a brutal policeman,” “A case of selfishness,” “He walked over others,” and “He ate like a pig”) were previously printed in a range of publications from Cosmopolitan to the New York Evening Journal.

“One has a more generic title: ‘A great event.’ In it, Young depicts a baseball game in hell, in which those destined to spend eternity down under are privy to a raucous ballgame while crowded into a ballpark that looks more like an ancient coliseum.”

When the illustration was first published, as I found at the New York Public Library’s Picture Collection, it had borne a different title — “A Ball Game” — and a reading line of “Never, until this time, had the sinners known a single hour’s respite from torture.”

Where did this line originate? It is not to be found in Through Hell with Hiprah Hunt, etc.

A little digging led me to Hell-Up-to-Date: The Reckless Journey of R. Palasco Drant, Special Correspondent, Through the Infernal Regions, as Recorded by Himself; with special illustrations by Art Young. It was published by the Schulte Publishing Company of Chicago in 1894. The jocularly named author may be assumed to be Young himself, as the only copyrights in the volume attach to the publisher (Francis J. Schulte) and to the illustrator (“Arthur H. Young”).

“I was fortunate in arriving in Hell at a time when I might witness a scene that had never occurred before in the history of the place. Never, until this time, had the sinners known a single hour’s respite from torture. [Aha!] In this one brief holiday, Mr. Satan permitted the holding of a base-ball contest between picked nines from Boston and Chicago sinners. A scrap torn from the Daily Groan, Satan’s official organ, and reproduced on page 52, gives a fair report of the more interesting events of the game.”

The “scrap” reads thus:

When Young revamped the work for publication in 1901 as Through Hell with Hiprah Hunt, he altered the illustration very slightly and added this bit of text, calling it Canto XXXIII:

A Great Event: A Baseball Game in Hell was originally published in Our Game on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Once upon a time in New York…

What was it like, to be alive then? When New York City was the capital of baseball, with three of its five boroughs hosting big-league clubs and the World Series seeming to be municipal property? When the city hosted the greatest game, the greatest pennant race, the greatest teams, greatest center fielders? When everything seemed bigger but somehow personal?

What was it like, to be home from the battle or to welcome a loved one’s return? To arrive at the golden door after surviving the ravages of war? To witness the welcome, to the nation and its pastime, of those formerly rebuked and scorned?

What was it like? For those of us old enough to remember, it was both glorious and sad and distant … yet seems only yesterday.

The glory days of baseball in New York have been tinged in sepia, recalled with syrupy nostalgia. Nostalgia as the Greeks understood that word was not sweet but painful: literally the ache of not being able to return home. Neither New York nor baseball, nor any of us who recall the period, can turn back the clock. Maybe this single photo summons up for you the era the way it really was: colorful, raucous, hopeful, thrilling, crushing. Glorious.

The Glory Days was originally published in Our Game on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We are now concluding the most prolific season for home runs in all baseball history — even if we are not crowning a new home run king. Arguments have been made that if Mike Stanton surpassed Babe Ruth’s 60, or Roger Maris’s 61, we could toss aside arithmetic, logic, and history while declaring him the new record holder. Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, and Barry Bonds all hit more than whatever Stanton will have hit by the time you read this — but what about this, and what about that, some will cluck. At least Aaron Judge unarguably surpassed McGwire’s rookie record of 49 homers.

Context is all when it comes to baseball statistics. In his big-league career Ruth never faced a black pitcher, played at night, or faced the demon relievers of the modern period; only rarely did a pitcher throw a pitch his way at 95 miles per hour. Maris had eight more games in his season, played against two expansion pitching staffs, etc. The arguments are familiar.

They were familiar even before the advent of the lively ball in 1920. When Ruth hit his 26th homer in 1919 he was widely believed to have set a new record, surpassing the mark set by Washington’s Buck Freeman in 1899. Then, some figure filbert dusted off Ned Williamson’s home-run total of 1884: 27, though Freeman’s mark of only 15 years later was termed the “modern record.” Ruth blasted by this ancient worthy, clouting 29 homers by year’s end. Next year he would be sold to the Yankees, and the rest you know.

But what about Williamson? How did a third baseman who hit 2 homers in 1883 and 3 in 1885 hit 27 in the year in between? It was his home grounds, Chicago’s new Lake Front Park, pictured above and, more revealingly of its dimensions, below (reminds one of the Polo Grounds, doesn’t it?).

In 1883 Williamson may have hit only 2 homers but he led the league with 49 two-baggers, as balls hit over the left-field fence (186 feet in 1883, 180 in 1884 — the shortest distance ever in a major-league park) were ruled ground-rule doubles. In 1884 these same hits were ruled home runs! For 1885 Chicago opened a new ballpark.

In the article accompanying the Harper’s Weekly image above, it was noted that: “Surmounting the grand stand is a row of eighteen private boxes, cozily draped with curtains to keep out wind and sun, and furnished with comfort able arm-chairs. By the use of the telephone and gong President [Albert Goodwill] Spalding can conduct all the preliminary details of the game without leaving his private box.”

Home Run Heaven was originally published in Our Game on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Home Run Hero … and Artist

Long John Reilly was a great ballplayer in his day, with a knack for hitting home runs. In 1888 his 13 home runs not only led the league but constituted the second most impressive home-run mark of the 19th century, as measured by standard deviations above the norm. Indeed, by this measure Reilly’s mark remains one of the top 25 in all baseball history, as described in Bill Felber’s “The Most Dominant Home Run Season Ever: Sabermetric Methods Applied to Feats of Long Ago” (https://goo.gl/8NzPxV).

Forgotten today by all but a handful, first baseman Reilly had an impressive OPS+ of 129 for his career, which was punctuated by a record three instances of hitting for the cycle (twice in one week in 1883, including a six-hit game). In 1890 he hit an astounding 26 triples. Had he not played his entire big-league career in Cincinnati, all but three in the American Association, baseball savants might have awarded Reilly consideration for the Hall of Fame.

I was in Cincinnati this past weekend for the wedding of my middle son. Baseball was far from my mind, not to mention John Reilly, when on an afternoon stroll downtown my wife suggested we enter the Cincinnati Art Gallery, just a block from our hotel. David Hausrath, the gallery’s owner, asked if I was baseball fan; I assured him that I was. On his desk was a sketchbook he had just disbound, with the intention of placing some pages in a forthcoming exhibition. He asked if I knew the name John Reilly, who had signed each of the pencil sketches…

Oh, I could tell you more about Reilly the ballplayer and even Reilly the artist, but my dear departed friend David Ball beat me to the punch, and I could not top his biographical portrait, which I commend to your attention (https://goo.gl/wRfHtd). But let me expound on the art just a little.

When John Good Reilly was 14 his mother apprenticed him to the Strobridge Lithographic Company, famous for its colorful posters for circus and theater. He would go on to work for that company in the offseason of his baseball years, on up to 1932, according to one account. Ball writes:

Among the items in the Cincinnati Historical Society archives’ collection of Strobridge materials is a practice sketchbook signed, in large flourishes, “John Reilly, 98 Kilgour St., Cincinnati Ohio U.S.A,” which includes a variety of practice sketches made by the young apprentice, among them elaborate emblems for the “Emmet [sic] Green Stockings Base Ball Club Cinci” as well as a “Resolutes Base Ball Club.”

A capsule biography in the New York Clipper of February 16, 1889 reads:

He gained his great reputation as a ball player with the Metropolitans in this city in 1882 when they became champion of the League Alliance. The Mets played 162 games that year, which were the greatest number of games played in one season up to that time. Reilly, however, is a Western man, being born in Cincinnati, Ohio, where, in that part of that city known as the “Bottoms,” he learned to play ball. It was seen almost from the first that “Long John” was the making of a ball player. Shortly afterward he was induced to join the Mohawk Browns, a famous amateur organization of his native city that had developed such noted ball players as Buck Ewing, now of the New Yorks, and others. It was while with this team that the veteran Robert Ferguson, who saw him play, predicted that he would soon occupy a prominent place in the professional ranks. How true was that prediction has since been proven.

In 1880 Reilly played first base for the Cincinnati Club of the National League, that being the club’s last year as a member of that organization. In 1881 he played with a semi-professional team of his native city. In 1882 he received quite a flattering offer to play first base for the Metropolitan team of this city, which was at that time managed by the genial James Mutrie, and he accepted it. He was not long with the Mets before he was recognized as a great player, excelling as batter, fielder and base runner. As a member of the Mets in 1882 Reilly took part in 157 games, and made 175 first base hits, and tallied 130 runs. He put out 1,673 men and was charged with 71 errors.

Reilly was a great favorite with the patrons of the national game in this city. In the legal dispute between the National League and the American Association during the Winter of 1882–3, Reilly was awarded to the Cincinnati Club, and he was placed on first base, although the Cincinnati Club had previously signed John S. Corkhill for that position. “Long John,” however, was assigned to be the guardian of the first base and he has remained there ever since. His “great reaches” after the ball while he still keeps his foot on the bag have been the delight as well as a source of wonderment to the lovers of the national game in Cincinnati. Reilly off the ball field is an artist, and, in that line, he has gained quite as much celebrity as he has as a professional player….

There was no further mention of his artistic side in that 1889 profile, but a year earlier Sporting Life had reported, “John Reilly has fitted up a studio in his home and does all his artistic work there now.” Ren Mulford, Jr. reported in 1914:

LONG JOHN, THE ARTIST. Artistic Cincinnati is talking of the sketches by Long John Reilly, which are hung in the gallery of the Cincinnati Art Club at the old Lincoln Club rooms. When the old Red was on the road with the team he always carried his sketch book with him. He is one of the best of the local artists devoted to lithography. Long John is as famous in his way as John Rettig, J. H. Sharp, Henry F. Farney [sic; should be Farny] and Henry [sic; should be Frank] Duveneck of the local school of art are in theirs. Reilly shows 103 little studies at the present show. He is a rare old bachelor devoted to his art, and seldom goes to the ball yard where he once reigned a ruling favorite. Once I possessed a Reilly sketch, one of his humoresque efforts showing “Bug” Holiday’s home run as he hop-scotched around the bases at Mansfield. Instead of having it framed I placed it in my desk, where a mouse with a fondness for watercolors chewed all the art off my treasure and turned me into an all-time mourner for the sketch that I prized as a gift from an old friend!

Reilly also exhibited some paintings at the Cincinnati Art Club, but their whereabouts are today unknown, at least to me — as were his mature sketches, until this past weekend. I was fortunate enough to purchase the three depicted.

The Life of Reilly was originally published in Our Game on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A message for statistical analysts, from long ago: Clarence Patrick McDonald, in the San Francisco Call, March 2, 1913

O, dopester, we grow weary of your tables.

Of your compilations and your “batting strength.”

What magic do you hold that thus enables

You to spout and rave at such unseemly length?

Comparisons are odious. The spelling,

In your case, fits the onion and the cheese;

What motive power is it that’s impelling

Such a wheeze?

***

Why is it you narrate, in manner solemn,

Your reasons for your eulogistic chaff?

Is it necessary you should take a column

For what should occupy a paragraph?

Why write at all, when you are wildly guessing?

Why pen a hope and hazard all a fact?

Is it because you revel in a pressing

Void of tact?

***

Eschew the deadly parallel in doping;

Let bygones slumber in their downy neat;

Show less exertion and befuddled groping

In digging spasms long since laid to rest.

Remember we are human — cut the chatter,

Embellish thoughts that you so seldom find;

Forget your skill at elevating matter

Over mind.

— C. P. McDonald

The Dopester: fie on statisticians was originally published in Our Game on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

First, it’s not me thinking anything today except Wow … a great day of baseball, and for baseball. The ten things in today’s post are thought by Elliott Kalb, Senior Editorial Director of MLB Network, and the MLB Network Research Department, notably Mike McCurry, Craig Nordquist, Matt Filippi, and Nate Purinton. I received this research packet just moments ago, as I and a limited number of privileged recipients have done each morning throughout the season. These routinely brilliant packets are designed to be particularly useful to those of us thinking about the day ahead, making us appear especially brilliant. Today’s inbox delight opens with a bit of baseball history, my turf. As to the rest, it is my privilege to share with a wider readership the sort of pleasure I get every day.

1) And then, there were five. Not big markets, huge markets!

Updated predictions (based on 100,000 simulations) from fivethirtyeight.com

Odds of Winning World Series:

Dodgers 30%

Astros 29%

Yankees 22%

Nationals 10%

Cubs 9%

In 1924, the four best teams in major league baseball were the Dodgers, the Yankees, the Washington Senators, and the New York Giants. The Dodgers finished 1.5 games behind the Giants; and the Yankees finished 2-games back of Washington. Washington beat the New York Giants in the World Series, led by pitcher Walter Johnson. Walter Johnson started and lost Game 5 on Wednesday, and then came back to pitch four scoreless relief innings on Friday in Game 7. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

If you were somehow cryogenically preserved in 1925, and revived earlier today, it wouldn’t take you long to understand what’s going on in baseball. We still have starters in playoff series that show up two-games later to throw four relief innings. We don’t have Babe Ruth playing RF for the Yankees, but we do have a guy that is 6–7, 285 that would have made Ruth look tiny.

We didn’t have antibiotics in the mid-1920s (penicillin, the first, wasn’t discovered until 1928) but we had tough competitors that took the ball despite feeling ill.

Stephen Strasburg pitched a terrific ballgame with his team facing elimination. As Thomas Boswell wrote in today’s Washington Post, “Nobody in baseball is ever going to see Strasburg the same way after the performance he produced in Wrigley Field on a raw, windy, misty evening.”

In the postgame press conference, Strasburg talked.

Q. Can you just take us through the last 24 hours, and sort of what went into deciding you starting today?

STEPHEN STRASBURG: Yeah, it was a challenge. It seemed like once we got here, you know, I got hit pretty hard with this virus. You know, it just seemed to suck the life out of me every single day.

You know, they got me on antibiotics and just wasn’t really working or anything. Luckily they switched it yesterday and in just the hopes that it would kind of kick in.

Woke up this morning, and you know, I wouldn’t say I felt like great but, you know, I felt like I was better than what I was the day before. And so games like this, you have to go out there and give it everything you have, whatever it is.

So I called Mad Dog (pitching coach Mike Maddux) in the morning and said, “Just give me the ball.” That’s what he did.

I thought a fatigued Strasburg could have given his team a real emotional lift just by pitching an inning or two, or keeping them in the game for four innings. Instead, he dominated for seven innings.

One more point: no one — not one media member I read, not one player, no one ever questioned his ability or talent. We questioned why he wasn’t announced as the starting pitcher.

2) So, who wins in D.C. on Thursday night in a winner-take-all game?

The Cubs win: Kyle Hendricks is coming off a brilliant Game 1 (7 shutout innings, 2 hits) vs. the Nationals.

The Nationals win: The Nats pitching has held the Cubs to a batting average of .159 (18–113 AB) 2 HR in this series.

The Cubs win: The Nationals are batting .063 (4–64 AB) with 2-strikes in the series.

The Nationals win: Max Scherzer will likely get the ball in relief for an inning or two late in a close game.

The Cubs win: Winning Game 7 of the World Series last year gives this team experience and confidence.

Craig Nordquist tells me that the Nationals will win because their relief options suddenly look as good as the Cubs. If Washington can get the ball to the pen with a lead, here are some of their options:

Gio Gonzalez If he isn’t SP, then having a 15-game winner come out of the pen ain’t bad

Tanner Roark If he isn’t SP, could piggyback off Gio. 3–0, 2.74 ERA in last 4 GS vs. Cubs

Max Scherzer 6.1 IP of 1-run ball in Game 3…nearly hit 100mph as reliever in 2016 ASG

Matt Albers 1 ER allowed in his last 22 IP…likely available for over an inning if needed

Brandon Kintzler All-Star this season…struggled somewhat lately, but solid veteran option

Ryan Madson 27 pitches in Game 4, but should be ready…1.63 ERA with Nats (incl. PS)

Sean Doolittle Converted 22 of 23 save opportunities, 2.25 ERA w/Nats (both incl. PS)

But then, I reminded Craig that the Cubs will win because their offense is bound to break out at some point. After all, they scored more runs during the regular season than they did a year ago when they won it all.

This Cubs team has scored just eight runs in the first four games of this series, batting .159 with a .514 OPS.

From the All-Star break through the end of the regular season, this Cubs team led the majors with 423 runs scored (5.7 runs/game), batting .273 with a .811 OPS during that span.

Anthony Rizzo has drove in five of Chicago’s eight runs this postseason. This situation is begging for somebody (Zobrist, Russell, Bryant, etc) to step up with a huge game at the plate.

I don’t know which team will win: Home teams are 53–53 in winner-take-all games in baseball postseason history.

Toss a coin.

3) The team that won 22-in a row from August 24-September 14 is OUT.

The team that lost 20 of 25 from August 26-September 20 is IN (and has the best chance of winning the World Series).

Mike McCurry looks at the Dodgers, a team that went 56–11 in a 67-game stretch and then went 5–20 in their next 25 games:

The truth is that the Dodgers are not as good as their initial streak suggests nor as bad as their follow-up skid would imply. They’re somewhere in the middle.

As Dave Roberts and company gear up for another NLCS beginning Saturday against a still-to-be-determined opponent, the Dodgers are the favorites to win the whole damned thing. They did win 104 games, finishing with the Majors’ best record.

Attempting to calculate how any team, no matter how dominant in the regular season, will fare over the course of a small postseason series is a risky proposition (and more unpredictable than a Dusty Baker press conference, for that matter).

But did you see the Dodgers in the NLDS against the Diamondbacks?

The Dodgers collectively hit .298 with an .858 OPS in three games. Justin Turner went 6–13 AB (.462) with five RBI. Yasiel Puig went 5–11 AB (.455) with four RBI. Primary reserve Austin Barnes (4–8 AB, .500 AVG, 3 RBI) further validated Los Angeles’ enviable depth.

Yu Darvish, LA’s №3 starter, looks the part of an ace again. Over his last four starts dating back to the regular season, Darvish is 3–0, has allowed just two earned runs across 24.1 innings (0.74), and has posted a 28:1 strikeout-to-walk-ratio.

Kenta Maeda, suddenly a primary setup man to Kenley Jansen, has allowed one earned run across five innings (1.80 ERA), striking out seven in four relief appearances since shifting to the bullpen for good. His average fastball velocity has jumped from 91.9 MPH to 93.1 MPH in that span.

While the Dodgers undoubtedly will be watching Thursday’s decisive NLDS Game 5 between the Cubs and Nationals intently, it doesn’t matter who their next opponent is.

The lone team that can defeat the Dodgers in the NLCS? Themselves.

The 2017 Dodgers won 104 games — the most by any team since the 2004 Cardinals.

They have the greatest pitcher of this generation in Clayton Kershaw, despite his well-documented postseason blips.

A date with either the Cubs (whom the Dodgers took four of six from during the regular season) or Nationals (in the season series, the Dodgers and Nationals matched each other in victories [3], runs scored [16], and hits [33]) would make for a riveting NLCS.

But if that were to mark the end of LA’s season, it would be a colossal disappointment.

Last year, the Dodgers defeated the Nationals in a taxing, draining NLDS that lasted all five games. Kershaw and Jansen were gasping for air by series’ end, and rightfully so, yet then had to quickly turn around and battle the juggernaut Cubs. Not to mention, Joe Freaking Blanton was one of the Dodgers’ primary eighth inning weapons.

This year, the Dodgers will have four full days of rest between the NLDS and NLCS. Kershaw and Jansen have enough downtime to take their family on a relaxing vacation to the beach. Maeda, along with Tony Cingrani (1 ER, 21 K in last 16.1 IP), has emerged as a reliable bridge to Kenley Jansen. Also, the Dodgers would almost certainly benefit from avoiding either the tandem of Jake Arrieta/Kyle Hendricks or Stephen Strasburg/Gio Gonzalez until NLCS Game 3 at the earliest.

Really, the Dodgers have no excuses this time around. The bandwagon is once again filling up.

4) 1948 is still the last time the Indians won the World Series.

Tom Hamilton: “Indians season down to its last strike…here’s the pitch, up and in…NO! Called strike three and the Yankees have defeated the Indians. Austin Jackson argues with Jeff Nelson but it doesn’t matter, the Indians season is over.”

Nate Purinton wraps up the Indians a few weeks earlier than most of us expected.

Into the wee hours of Wednesday night into Thursday morning, a lyric from The Doors kept coming back to me: “When the music’s over, turn out the lights…” Turn the lights out on the Indians’ 102-win season; the best Cleveland team since ’95. It was a special regular season, but only one result this October could outshine the playoff run a year ago. Keep this in mind: the underdog Indians won ten of its first 12 playoff games last year. It was as magical as the 2017 regular season. Maybe even on par with the 22-game win streak.

Big-market clubs live in a different world. Small-market clubs are irrelevant for years until a “window of contention.” After the club’s mid-90s resurgence, Tribe fans witnessed Albert Belle, Manny Ramirez, and Jim Thome depart via free agency. The ’07 team was supposed to open a new window of contention; except CC Sabathia was a free agent after 2008. CC, Victor Martinez, and Cliff Lee were all traded by July 2009, though each had one foot out the door already with free agency looming.

This winter, the Indians likely say good bye to Carlos Santana, Bryan Shaw, and Jay Bruce. And Michael Brantley could go too as the team isn’t likely to pick up his $11M club option. Where Jason Kipnis fits on this club is no longer clear. A difficult offseason for the Indians’ front office begins much earlier than they hoped. Don’t get me wrong: the Indians will contend in 2018. The window remains open as Corey Kluber, Carlos Carrasco, Danny Salazar, and Trevor Bauer will be together through the 2020 season.

But the clock is ticking. Next November, the Tribe will say good bye to Cody Allen and Andrew Miller. If things go poorly, it’ll happen at the trade deadline. And sadly, Terry Francona won’t manage this team forever. And Francisco Lindor will one day head for greener pastures. The Red Sox and Astros are in their windows to win; and the Yanks are only getting better. In the AL Central, the Twins and White Sox are burgeoning threats. The failure in this ALDS brings intense residual disappointment about last year’s World Series. Everything has to go right for a club like the Indians to win the Fall Classic. There will be similar pressure in 2018 should this team return to the postseason. The clock is always ticking. But for now, the music’s over … turn out the lights. Oh, and please turn out the lights on the Chief.

5) If you don’t like strikeouts, maybe the Astros are for you! Matt Filippi looks at the Astros. They make contact!

The Astros have had MLB’s best offense in 2017. They led baseball in batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage and were second in home runs (to the Yankees).

However, the most impressive thing about this Astros offense is their strikeouts, or lack thereof.

Fun fact: MLB as a whole set a new record for strikeouts in 2017 with 40,104. In fact, the league has set a new record for strikeouts in each of the past ten (11) seasons. As pitchers continue to throw harder and start throwing more max effort in shorter stints, the strikeouts have been skyrocketing. And as this has happened league-wide, the Astros have found a way to go against the grain and tone down their punch outs on offense. Take a look:

Houston Astros batters Strikeout Rate with MLB Ranks — Last Five Seasons

2013 25.5% Worst

2014 23.8% 2nd-Worst

2015 22.9% 2nd-Worst

2016 23.4% 4th-Worst

2017 17.3% Best

That is a pretty incredible turn around, especially given the current offensive environment. So how does this happen? Well, it seems that Houston has made a concerted effort to acquire players with this skillset (h/t to fellow researcher Mike McCurry):

Players Acquired Over Last Two Years with 2017 Strikeout Rate

Josh Reddick 13.3%

Brian McCann 14.5%

Yuli Gurriel 11.0%

Carlos Beltran 20.0%

*MLB Average K% in 2017: 21.6%

Reddick has taken the at-bats of Colby Rasmus (29.0 K% in 2016) who left in free agency. McCann stepped in to take Jason Castro’s spot (32.7 K% in 2016), and Gurriel has taken the at-bats left by Luis Valbuena (23.7 K% in 2016). Beltran was just another hitter who the Astros decided to add who makes contact at an above average rate.

It also helps when the young core players develop good bat-to-ball skills. Alex Bregman improved from 24.0% in his rookie year to 15.5% this year. George Springer has improved from 33.0% as a rookie in 2014 to 17.6% in 2017. Carlos Correa (career 19.6%) and Jose Altuve (career 10.7%) have always made a ton of contact.

And if we take a deeper dive, we will see that at least part of this success comes from a good two strike approach:

Best Team Batting Average with Two Strikes

2017 Regular Season

Astros .199

Red Sox .199

Indians .194

Tigers .192

Marlins .190

*MLB Average in 2017: .176

You might be wondering if this skill can translate to the postseason against better pitching. To help answer that, I’ll mention that they hit .288 with two strikes in their ALDS with the Red Sox. The power that they already had was scary, but this team now also has the ability to grind out at-bats and put the ball in play at every spot in the lineup. Look out.

6) Stats that may only be of interest to me

We have played 18 playoff games so far, which has seen 319 innings pitched.

Do you want to know what the Leadoff Batter in an inning is doing in this year’s playoffs?

.225/.291/.372 in the postseason

In the regular season, the leadoff batter in an inning slashed .256/.320/.437.

Pitchers are getting the first out in an inning.

And another thing I’m noticing. There aren’t a lot of innings in which a team strings together three or four hits.

The Indians had four hits in a row in the fifth inning of Game 5 last night (Jackson, Bruce, Perez, Urshela).

The Nationals had three hits in a 4-run eighth inning in Game 4 yesterday (Murphy single, Taylor grand-slam, Lind single).

That’s rare.

319 innings pitched in the postseason.

31 innings in which a team strung together 3+ hits

So, let me put this straight: In this year’s postseason, the leadoff batter gets on base less than 30% of the time. In 288 of the 319 innings, there are less than 3-hits.

The batting average in the postseason is down to .234 (it was .255 in the regular season).

Hey, if you like home runs (50 in the 18 games, 2.77 per game) we have them, at a greater rate than the 2.5 per game in the regular season.

If you like strikeouts, enjoy!

Oh by the way, less balls in play but the games are taking longer. The average time of game for a 9-inning postseason game is 3:36.

7) Mr. Hendricks goes to Washington. Eric Nehs updates us on the pitcher with the pressure on him.

I wrote last week about Hendricks and is success coming back from the DL in late July. Hendricks has never been a pitcher that thrives on velocity, but his stuff early in the season was noticeably down from 2016, and it coincided with his lack of results.

Hendricks has been a different pitcher since returning from the DL in July posting a 2.01 ERA in 14 starts thanks in part to focusing on that change-up. However, Hendricks has also seen his velocity greatly improve over the last month.

Kyle Hendricks Avg. Fastball Velocity

Last Seven Starts

August 31 85.8

September 5 86.5

September 10 86.5

September 16 87.0

September 23 87.2

September 28 87.2

NLDS GM1 88.3*

*Highest since 2016 Playoffs

Including postseason, take a look at Hendricks’ run since the beginning of September as his velocity has increased.

Kyle Hendricks

Since start of September (Including Postseason)

GS 6

IP 38.1

ERA 1.64

K/BB 35/8

Opp. OPS .541

WHIP 0.97

Again velocity isn’t everything, but hitters haven’t fared as well vs. Hendricks as his velocity has picked up over the months. After every start, Hendricks is looking more and more like the 2016 version of himself when he posted a 2.12 ERA.

Kyle Hendricks

2017 Fastball Splits

Average Velocity / Opp. AVG

April-August 85.6 .266

September 86.9 .169

NLDS GM 1 88.3 .143 (2–14 AB)

*2016: 88.3 MPH

8) Game times, weather, and fans in the stadium

There will be a very meaningful game in Washington, D.C. tonight, with a full house on hand at Nationals Park.

According to the Washington Post, the Metro will not stay open past 11:30 pm eastern tonight. This would likely mean thousands of Nationals (or Cubs) fans would be stranded without public transportation to get home.

First pitch of Thursday’s contest is scheduled to begin at 8:08 pm eastern tonight. Let’s face it, the average 9-inning postseason game is close to 3:45. Can you say, Uber?

This isn’t the first time Metro has made things tough for baseball fans. The same thing happened last season in Game Five of the 2016 NLDS between the Dodgers and Nationals. Metro wouldn’t stay open past their hours of operation in order to reportedly work on repairing tracks.

Game 5 of the 2016 NLDS, Dodgers vs. Nationals: Four hours, 32 minutes

It’s not just the Nationals fans going to the Park that are inconvenienced. The weather at Wrigley yesterday was awful, with drizzle and temperatures in the 40s with 16 mph winds.

The fans in Boston weren’t even sure of the Game Four start time less than 24-hours before first pitch.

Too bad, too bad, too bad. The truth is, while the fans paying good money to attend postseason games are important, it’s more important to schedule and play the games when they can be seen by the most people.

That’s serving your audience — your television audience of millions, not your ballpark attendance of thousands. I just have a problem when people say or write that television is driving the ugly start times and circumstances around these games. The philosopher Jeremy Bentham once wrote: “The greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people.”

9) It was 20 years ago today … Nate Purinton revisits Livan Hernandez’s 15-strikeout game with a few numbers from last night’s expanded strike zone.

According to Inside Edge, home plate umpire Jeff Nelson blew 11.4% (19 of 167) of the ball-strike calls on pitches taken in Game Five of the ALDS. The 31 strikeouts in Cleveland Wednesday night were the most ever in a nine-inning postseason game, and certainly a by-product of the inconsistent zone.

But hey, he was better than home plate umpire Eric Gregg on this date 20 years ago. In a tidy 2 hour and 27 minute game, Livan Hernandez outdueled Greg Maddux 2–1 in Game Five of the ’97 NLCS, while striking out an LCS record-tying 15 Braves. Believe it or not, the 25 combined strikeouts in that contest (15 Braves & 10 Marlins) are still an LCS record for a nine-inning game! Eight of those 25 punchouts were called by Gregg.

Gregg said after the game: “My strike zone has been consistent on both sides for 20 years.” Chipper Jones said after the game: “I know I swung at a couple of pitches that were at least a foot outside…I turned around and asked if they were strikes and Gregg said, ‘Yes.’ I couldn’t help but chuckle…”

Prior to this outing, Hernandez had never struck out more than eight batters in a game. Livan struck out ten or more batters just three times in his 483 other career starts in the majors (including playoffs). Livan struck out 15 of the 31 batters he faced in Game Five. Outside this contest, he struck out just 11 of the other 87 batters he faced in the ’97 playoffs. Of his 88 strikes, 37 were called! Gregg’s outside corner covered roughly the entire I-75 corridor between Fort Lauderdale west to Fort Myers.

10) Tweets we like:

@AndrewSimonMLB

Even in the context of this postseason, Tanner Roark got pulled pretty early.

@AdamKilgoreWP

I would love to hear the reaction if Dusty Baker brought in a reliever *in the middle of an at-bat* and he gave up a grand slam.

Ryan M. Spaeder @theaceofspaeder

Aaron Judge 2017 #ALDS 23 plate appearances 16 strikeouts #Padres Tony Gwynn 1995 regular season 577 plate appearances 15 strikeouts

@dcone36

Friendly reminder-Stick Michael scouted and pushed for Didi trade #Didi

Jim Hayes‏ @TheCatOnFox

I woke up this morning with a strange new Natitude. Can’t figure out why.

@dcuniverse

Go, Cubs fans, go.

Chelsea Janes‏ @chelsea_janes

Cant help but wonder what the decibel levels would be if Max Scherzer ran in from the bullpen in a winner-take-all game at Nats Park.

Barry Svrluga‏ @barrysvrluga

Strasburg’s changeup may be detained at O’Hare tonight for questioning.

Navy Yard Nats‏ @NavyYardNats

Tonight early @wmata closure may force fans to leave in 6th inning. #NatsRide @Uber & @lyft are available to help folks stay until the end!

Jared Diamond @jareddiamond

Jon Lester’s pickoff might have just surpassed Archie Bradley’s triple as my favorite moment of the 2017 playoffs.

Jesse Spector‏ @jessespector

Tomorrow will be weird. The Chicago Cubs as the team trying to extend someone’s streak of postseason misery. The universe is upside down.

vinny milano‏ @baldvinny

Roses are red, violets are glorious. Maybe you should stop pitching to Didi Gregorious.

wallace matthews‏ @OysterBayBomber

Who would’ve believed neither Corey Kluber nor Aaron Judge would be a factor in this ALDS?

Bobby Big Wheel‏ @BobbyBigWheel

50 Cent could throw a strike with this umpire

10 Things I Think I Think for Thursday, October 12, 2017 was originally published in Our Game on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

First, it’s not me thinking anything today except: an odd, ugly, yet glorious night of baseball in the nation’s capital; no one has ever seen anything like it before, unless you recall Game 7 of the 1960 World Series, which was ugly until it was beautiful. The ten things in today’s post are thought by Elliott Kalb, Senior Editorial Director of MLB Network, and the MLB Network Research Department, notably Marc Adelberg, Nate Purinton, Eric Nehs, Matt Orso, Craig Nordquist, and Zach Lupica, as well as writers Brad Lefton and Joe Posnanski. I received this research packet just moments ago, as I and a limited number of privileged recipients have done each morning throughout the season. These routinely brilliant packets are designed to be particularly useful to those of us thinking about the day ahead, making us appear especially brilliant. Today’s inbox delight opens with a bit of baseball history, my turf. As to the rest, it is my privilege to share with a wider readership the sort of pleasure I get every day.

1) And then, there were four.

2) It’s Friday the 13th

This was the 13th season the Nationals have played in Washington, D.C.

Let me explain why the Nats don’t win.

The Washington Nationals have still never won a playoff series. I said it five years ago, and I keep saying it. Bad Karma.

The Baseball Gods don’t like it when good teams don’t do everything possible to win a World Series. The Nationals had a chance to win it all in 2012. They handicapped themselves, and didn’t give themselves a chance.

That is what the Nationals did in the 2012 season. The organization actually shut down Stephen Strasburg after his start on September 7 that season because he was around 160 innings pitched. Let me refresh your memory: General Manager Mike Rizzo (with the tacit blessing of Strasburg and agent Scott Boras) did not give him time off, and they did not pitch him in relief, and they did not go to a 6-man rotation. Nope, they shut him down.

The best record the Nationals have ever had remains the 2012 season, when they won 98 games (they won 97 this year). But the Nats felt comfortable not pitching Strasburg in that postseason. So after throwing top of the rotation pitchers Gio Gonzalez (more on him later) and Jordan Zimmermann, the Nats played the first home game ever at Nationals Park with Edwin Jackson pitching instead of Strasburg. Seriously.

Edwin gave up a single and run-scoring double in the first inning. He gave up a double, single, three-run homer, and single to the first four batters he faced in the second inning.

The Nationals had Game 3, Game 4, and Game 5 all played at home (that year, MLB had a 2–3 format in the Division Series). The Nats lost Game 5 by a score of 9–7. Gio Gonzalez was staked to a 6–0 lead. But karma wasn’t going to allow this team to win. No sir! Not then, not ever.

Nationals Playoff history

2012: Lost Division Series 3–2 to St. Louis (5th game at home)

2014: Lost Division Series 3–1 to San Francisco

2016: Lost Division Series 3–2 to Los Angeles (5th game at home)

2017: Lost Division Series 3–2 to Chicago (5th game at home)

So, the Nationals had a better record than their opponent (earning Home Field Advantage in Game 5) in all four years they reached the postseason.

In 2012, they blew a six-run lead at home in the deciding game.

In 2014, well, let me say this: Somehow, the Nationals lost Game 4 in San Francisco in 2014, or they would have schlepped everyone back across the country for a Game 5 at Nationals Park.

In 2016, Max Scherzer (more on him later) was nursing a 1–0 lead through six innings. He was nine outs away from leading his team into the World Series for the first time.

In the top of the 7th inning of Game 5 in 2016, Max Scherzer allowed a leadoff home run to Joc Pederson which tied the game. Dusty Baker then pulled Max, who was around the 100-pitch mark.

Scherzer was one of six Washington pitchers needed to get three Dodgers out in the seventh inning. Dusty tried Marc Rzepczynski, Blake Treinen, Sammy Solis, Shawn Kelley, and Oliver Perez.

The Nats would tease their fans by getting closer, only to see the best pitcher of the generation (Clayton Kershaw) come in and record a save after the Dodgers closer needed to get 7 outs (sound familiar, Washington fans)?

Oh, I forgot. Stephen Strasburg didn’t pitch after September 7, in 2016 either. This time, he was injured (flexor mass strain in right arm) and missed the postseason.

Strasburg didn’t pitch in 2012 postseason (essentially, by choice). You cannot sit a healthy athlete, thinking there will be other opportunities in the future. You can’t guarantee the pitcher’s elbow will hold up. You cannot even guarantee that the mold in five-star hotel rooms won’t cause illness. Thank goodness for anti-biotics!

If you add up the four postseason series the Nats have played, you’ll find the Nationals have played 19 postseason games. More than 31% of those games have been started by — guess who — Gio Gonzalez.

Gio Gonzalez: postseason history (0–0, 4.78 ERA)

Gio has never gotten an out in the sixth inning of six playoff starts. And he’s walked 19 batters in 26.1 innings. That’s 6.5 BB/9 innings. In his regular season career, he’s walked 3.7 BB/9 IP.

And I don’t want to pick on Gio too much. The Nationals won three of those six starts.

Did you know that Max Scherzer’s teams have lost each of the last seven postseason games he’s appeared in (and 11 of the last 14)?

Now, I know he’s pitched well at times, brilliant at times. But his teams lose. Sometimes, they lose 9–8 (like in Game 5, when Max was the losing pitcher in relief). Sometimes, they lose 2–1 (like the Nats did in Game 3, when Max pitched 6.1 no-hit innings to begin).

Scherzer started twice in last year’s NLDS against the Dodgers. His team lost 4–3 and 4–3. Max pitched six innings, and six innings. He gave up five hits, and five hits.

Nationals wrap-up

Ø They took over first place in the Division on April 18, never relinquished it, and won the division by 20 games.

Ø They clinched their division on September 10.

Ø 819 runs set a franchise record, as did the 215 home runs

Ø There were a lot of positives in their season. Ryan Zimmerman put up career numbers. Michael A. Taylor has proven to be a dynamic outfielder who really stepped in and replaced Adam Eaton.

Ø And then, there is Jayson Werth, finishing off his contractual obligations to the Nationals.

3) Marc Adelberg gets creative in figuring out what Jayson was Werth.

**SCENE SET**

**Sunday, December 5, 2010…Disney’s Swan and Dolphin Resort**

The Winter Meetings are just one day away. The MLB Network crew has just arrived in Orlando to finish setting up for four days of coverage at the still-sleepy resort. The shock of record cold temperatures in Orlando — the week saw the thermometer drop into the mid-30s — is matched only by the shock of the substantiated rumor: Jayson Werth agreed to a nine-figure deal.

MLBN PRODUCER: Did you hear?

MLBN RESEARCHER: Hear what?

MLBN PRODUCER: Jayson Werth is signing with the Nationals…

MLBN RESEARCHER: The last-place Natio —

MLBN PRODUCER: …For $126 million!

MLBN EXEC: Isn’t that an outrageous overpay?

**SCENE**

October 13, 2017 — Washington, D.C.

When Jayson Werth struck out for the second out in the ninth inning on Thursday, it might have been his last swing in a Nationals uniform. It’s natural to look back at his D.C. career and wonder if he lived up to the money.

Ever since news broke of Werth’s agreement on the eve of the 2010 Winter Meetings, we’ve asked: “Really?” “Really?” wasn’t the only question. “How did he get that much?” “Why would he leave a four-time division champion to sign with the perennial doormat in the NL East?” “How old is he?” “Will he keep his beard?” (Just kidding.)

Nationals GM Mike Rizzo answered the questions even before they were asked. Soon after the news broke, he explained his side. “Phase 1 was scouting and player development, building the farm system,” Rizzo said. “Now it’s the time to go to the second phase and really compete for division titles and championships.”

Obviously, one player does not a division winner make. But in Rizzo’s mind, a team which finished in fourth or fifth in the NL East in seven straight seasons needed Werth’s skill and experience; “The Beard” made for a worthy addition at any cost.

While the contract figures opened eyes — it was the 12th-most lucrative contract in baseball history, at the time — Werth’s early production went a long way towards validating the deal. Werth played only 81 games due to injury in 2012, but he slashed .300/.387/.440 to help the club to its first NL East title. Although he finished only one season in D.C. with counting statistics approaching those he recorded in Philly (2013: 25 HR, 82 RBI), for much of his contract his performance was well above average. From 2011–14, Werth had a .375 OBP and 126 OPS+ — or 26 percent above league average. Likely as important as his production, Werth provided a consistent and professional approach in the middle of a young lineup. Though his impact waned in the last three years, he remained a difficult out — a cog in one of the National League’s most prolific offenses.

4) Nate Purinton gets us ready for Game 1 of the ALCS with an outstanding preview.

The Astros and Yankees square off the in the ALCS in which the two AL MVP candidates will be on the same field. One played like an MVP in the ALDS. The other did not.

ALDS Comparison

While the Judge-Altuve comparison will be a frequent conversation, the series pits an excellent Astros offense that specializes in making contact against a Yankees staff built on swing-and-miss stuff.

The Yankees have an edge in this series in rotation depth and in the bullpen but there’s not a massive difference. However, the Astros lineup is much, much deeper than the Yankees. Houston had ten players with at least 250 plate appearances who were better than league average offensively (100 OPS+ or better). By comparison, the Yankees had six players who were better than league average in 2017.

Brett Gardner, who delivered the best at-bat in the postseason against Cody Allen on Wednesday, needs to be impactful for the Yankees. If he can get on-base, it makes pitching to Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez that much more difficult. And Brian McCann struggles to control the running game. Gardner stole 23 bases in 28 attempts during the regular season.

Lowest Caught Stealing Pct.

2017 MLB (Min. 600 Innings at Catcher)

Kevan Smith 12.5%

Brian McCann 12.9%*

Travis d’Arnaud 16.7%

Caleb Joseph 18.2%

*McCann: 54 steals allowed in 62 attempts

Beyond those numbers, there is some fun to be had when comparing the Yankees and Astros’ respective postseason histories.

During the Astros rebuild from 2011 to 2014, the team averaged 104 losses per year. Since the franchise was first known as the Yankees in 1914 (previously the Highlanders), the team has never lost 100 games in a season.

5) Japanese-born pitchers will decide who plays in the World Series.

There are six Japanese-born pitchers who are active: Kenta Maeda, Hisashi Iwakuma, Yu Darvish, Masahiro Tanaka, Kojj Uehara, Junichi Tazawa.

Three of them (Tanaka, Darvish, and Maeda) will play key roles in the League Championship Series. Tanaka starts Game 1 for the Yankees. Darvish will start Game 2 or Game 3 for the Dodgers. Maeda will be used in the “Andrew Miller” role — unleashed for multi-innings at any point.

Brad Lefton is a bilingual, St. Louis based journalist who has covered baseball in Japan and America for more than two decades. I emailed him for his thoughts on the three pitchers.

Brad: It’s tough to say who was the best between Tanaka, Maeda, and Darvish because each was accomplished in his own way.

All three were considered elite pitchers before they came to MLB. They have 5 Sawamura Awards (Cy Young equivalent) between them: Tanaka (’11 & ’13), Darvish (’07), and Maeda (’10 & ’15).

However, Tanaka and Darvish have 2 things Maeda does not: both starred in the National High School Baseball Tournament before turning pro and both led their pro teams to a Japan Series title.

The Carp never made the Japan Series during Maeda’s years. He played at an elite baseball high school but never made the championship game. Darvish famously pitched a no hitter in the first round of the spring tourney in ’04. That’s a huge deal in Japan and earned him instant and forever lasting notoriety. Tanaka outdid Darvish at the high school tourney, earning him even greater acclaim.

As pros, Tanaka had a perfect 24–0 season and led Rakuten to the 2013 Japan Series title; Darvish’s Fighters went to the Japan Series 3 times during his career, winning it all in 2006 and individually, he led the Pacific League in strike outs 3 times in 7 seasons.

In conclusion, I’d say Maeda doesn’t have the high school background these guys have nor has he led his team to a Japan Series title, so his stature may have been slightly less when he came over.

Tanaka was teammates with Darvish on the 2008 Japanese Olympic Team. Masahiro was the youngest Japanese baseball player to play in the Olympics. He was a middle reliever on the team, with a 0.00 ERA.

And if the situation works out, Tanaka could meet Darvish in a World Series start.

Eric Nehs has a bit more to say about Tanaka:

Some in the media were surprised by Joe Girardi going with Masahiro Tanka as his Game 1 starter in the ALCS and not Sonny Gray. The move didn’t surprise me. Girardi is going with who he thinks is his best starter right now and throwing out all of the other noise like home/road splits and numbers on extra rest.

Let’s start with Tanaka’s home/road splits this season. All I’ve heard this week is that the Yankees should avoid pitching Tanaka on the road. I can’t argue that Tanaka has struggled on the road this season, but I’m not convinced that it’s randomness because some of his bigger blowup games coming on the road this season. Just look at his 2016 road numbers, Tanaka was a lot better on the road than he was in Yankee Stadium.

Bonus fact: Don’t ever cite DAY/NIGHT splits for Tanaka either. Tanaka’s worst start of the year came vs. the Astros AT Yankee Stadium on Sunday Night Baseball on May 14. Even though that game started sometime after 7 PM ET, all databases call that a DAY game because it was the second game of a single admission doubleheader that started before 4 PM.

Then there’s the fact that Tanaka is that much better on extra rest. Is that really the case? Tanaka’s will make Friday’s start on regular rest, and is ERA shows that he’s been just about the same pitcher. Now he isn’t as dominant as shown by his Opp. OPS and K/9, but this shouldn’t preclude him from starting on Friday.

6) The Yankees will face Dallas Keuchel in a postseason game. Dallas is 1.41 ERA in six regular season starts vs. the Yankees (plus six scoreless in the 2015 Wild Card Game).

The last time they faced Keuchel in a postseason game, Girardi batted Carlos Beltran, Alex Rodriguez, and Brian McCann in the 3–4–5 spots in the batting order.

Hmmm, that won’t work this time around.

Okay, those three aren’t around. Who should DH against Keuchel?

Matt Orso breaks it down. Yankees designated hitters are 0-for-20 in during the 2017 postseason. The club’s primary options at DH are Chase Headley, Jacoby Ellsbury and Matt Holliday.

Headley is 0-for-12 AB with six strikeouts during the 2017 postseason. In fact, dating back to the end of the regular season, he’s is 16–80 AB (.200) with no extra-base hits and 18 strikeouts in his last 24 contests.

The switch-hitter has struggled against left-handed pitchers this season, slashing .256/.299/.404 in 156 at-bats (including the postseason).

Ellsbury is 0-for-8 AB with two strikeouts during the 2017 postseason. He’s 5–38 AB (.132) with one extra-base hit in his last 12 games dating back to the end of the regular season. Ellsbury is slashing .238/.298/.333 with 30 strikeouts in 105 at-bats vs. left-handed pitchers this season.

Holliday hasn’t appeared in a game yet during the postseason, though he was on the roster for the LDS and Wild Card games.

Holliday’s slashed just .179/.225/.300 with four home runs in 37 games following the All-Star break. He was limited to just 105 games this season due to two separate DL stints (a viral infection and a left lumbar strain).

Ellsbury did not start vs. Keuchel in the 2015 AL Wild Card Game against Keuchel and he shouldn’t start Friday! He’s 2–16 AB (.125) with three strikeouts in his career vs. the Astros’ lefty.

So who would Orso put in as the DH?

In the 2017 playoffs, DH’s are slashing just .219/.305/.301 with no home runs and five RBI in 73 at-bats.

Ronald Torreyes slashed .292/.314/.375 in 315 at-bats with the Yankees in the regular season (he’s 0–1 AB during the 2017 postseason). He hits left-handers. He’s never faced Keuchel.

The great Craig Nordquist updates our Stats that may only be of interest to us

Scoring by Inning This Postseason

1–32 .255 / .349 / .582 14 HR

2–18 .250 / .351 / .399 4 HR

3–20 .243 / .313 / .426 6 HR

4–20 .262 / .357 / .421 4 HR

5–20 .201 / .268 / .351 6 HR

6–19 .221 / .327 / .371 4 HR

7–21 .248 / .315 / .416 6 HR

8–22 .246 / .335 / .458 7 HR

9–7 .229 / .267 / .271 1 HR

Extras — 1 .125 / .250 / .125 0 HR

Postseason HR by Year Since Wild Card Game Introduced in 2012

2017 52

2016 71

2015 91

2014 57

2013 55

2012 61

All Teams This Postseason When Leading Off An Inning: .227/.296/.383

*Lowest AVG in this scenario for any postseason since 2013

The overall ERA of all teams this postseason is 4.33 … the highest since 2011 (4.62)

7) Double-play combos!

2B/SS combinations can be key in this day and age. Here are the double-play combos remaining:

Chicago: Baez/Russell

L.A.: Utley or Forsythe/Seager

Houston: Altuve/Correa

NY: Castro/Gregorius

This is the ninth single season in which a double play duo posted six-win seasons, and the second consecutive season for Jose Altuve and Carlos Correa. Joe Gordon and Lou Boudreau are the only other combo to accomplish it twice.

I narrowed it down to get rid of the glove first guys like Omar Vizquel and Mark Belanger. This is just the third season EVER with a double play duo posting a six-win season with an OPS+ higher than 130.

8) Zach Lupica asks: Can we give Yasiel Puig a little love?

It seems for the past couple of seasons Yasiel Puig has been a constant target for ridicule by Dodger fans, baseball purists, analysts and many more. For some reason or another I’ve always liked Puig. I never minded the antics. Should he be missing workouts or showing up late? Of course not. Does he sometimes take the #antics too far? Sure. But to me he’s always been a fun watch. And not only did he have a pretty good season, he had a great NLDS. So let’s give the guy a little credit where credit is due.

Regular season:

Puig was the Dodgers’ best defensive player. Hands down.

· He led the Dodgers this season with 18 defensive runs saved (Seager was next with 10).

· You could make a case for Puig getting the gold glove in right field, he was tied with Jason Heyward among NL RF with 18 DRS.

· He led the Dodgers with a 12.1 UZR (Seager was next at 6.7)

Puig hit .263 this season with 28 homers and 74 RBI with an OPS of .833

· Puig was the Dodgers’ most durable player. He led the Dodgers with 152 games played this season.

· The 28 homers were 9 more than his previous career-high of 19 in his rookie season

· The 74 RBI were 5 more than his previous career-high of 69 in 2014

Postseason (yes, I know it’s only been three games):

Puig hit a combined 4–25 AB (.160 AVG) over 13 games in the 2015 and 2016 playoffs. He already has more hits this postseason than the last two combined.

Puig is 5–11 AB (.455 AVG) with a double, a triple and four RBI during 3 games in the NLDS

Puig saw 3.72 pitches per plate appearances in the regular season — He is seeing 5.77 pitches per plate appearance in the playoffs (he has seen 75 pitches — 6 more than any other Dodger).

- No player who has had more than one plate appearance has seen more pitches/plate appearances this postseason

Puig went 2–3 AB with a triple and a walk in the seventh inning or later vs the D-Backs.

In the regular season he hit just .183 off left-handed pitching (he is a .260 career hitter off lefties). In the Division Series he went 2–3 AB off lefties, both singles (Robby Ray and Jorge De La Rosa) with runners in scoring position.

In the regular season he swung and missed at 24.8% of pitches. This postseason he has swung 35 times and whiffed just 4 times (11.4% miss %).

Puig has struck out just one time in 13 plate appearances this postseason.

This all for a guy who was sent to the minors on August 2nd last season. Not bad.

Joe Posnanski from MLB.com seems to share some similar sentiments regarding Puig and this Dodgers squad:

The whole “X factor” cliche gets overused, and few people seem to even know what it means to begin with. But maybe X is the the exact right letter for Puig. He can do anything on a baseball diamond. He can beat teams with his speed, his power, his hitting talents, his defense, his arm. He electrifies crowds, both home and away, with the way he plays the game. In the NLDS, he got the biggest cheers in Dodger Stadium, the biggest boos when the Dodgers went to Arizona, and you figure it will be that way throughout the postseason.

Yes, maybe Puig is the X, the one marking the spot, the one in the center square, the constant in the algebra problem, the multiplication sign in the Dodgers’ hopes. If the Wild Horse keeps going like this, you wonder if anyone can catch him or the Dodgers.

9) Tweets we like:

Jeff Passan‏ @JeffPassan

This game reminds me of my 5-year-old. It is brilliant and maddening and amazing and frustrating and fun to watch and pure, utter insanity.

Matt Yallof‏ @MattYallofMLB

In a few weeks Kluber & Scherzer may be handed Cy Youngs. After saying “congrats” 1st question: “have u recovered from miserable DS losses?”

Peter Gammons‏ @pgammo

October baseball going into LCS:Starting P 165 1/3 IP, Relievers 171 2/3

Dan Hirsch‏ @DanHirsch

More

Kenny Lofton and Jose Vizcaino are the only players to play for the Dodgers, Cubs, Yankees and Astros

David Cameron‏ @DCameronFG

For 100 years, Jose Lobaton was safe, and no one thought differently. Replay wasn’t designed for this.

Mike Petriello‏ @mike_petriello

That was the best terrible game I’ve ever seen. Congrats, Cubs. Your reward is a cross-country flight to start.. John Lackey, really? in LA.

Dan Steinberg‏ @dcsportsbog

13 chances to make it to a league semifinal [for DC teams] since 1998. 13 losses. Defies comprehension

Mark Zuckerman‏ @MarkZuckerman

Lotta disconsolate people in that clubhouse, but Werth (nearly choking up), Wieters (took full blame) and Scherzer topped the list.

Chelsea Janes‏ @chelsea_janes

That is, quite frankly, the most Nationals playoff moment of all time.

Andy McCullough‏ @McCulloughTimes

Dodgers-Cubs is the matchup everyone wanted in March and then forgot about for six months. Great theater ahead.

Jonah Keri‏ @jonahkeri

Definitely how you want to decide one of the wildest MLB playoff games of the past decade. On a foot slipping off a base by 2 millimeters.

Rob Lowe‏ @RobLowe

Final thought for tonight. NO sporting event should last 4.5 hours. Ever. @MLB

Andy McCullough‏ @McCulloughTimes

My head might explode and I have no vested interest in the outcome

Jon Heyman‏ @JonHeyman

dusty looked sad and spent after. agree w/pedro, never seen him like that. nats should bring him back but doesn’t seem like a given at moment

10) Dusty Baker: tortured manager. Nate Purinton shows us just how frustrating.

Was this Dusty’s best team?

Dusty Baker’s illustrious managerial career spans 22 seasons. Take out the two strike-impacted years of ’94 and ’95 and his teams have averaged 87 wins per year. And in 1993, the final full season before the implementation of the Wild Card, his Giants won 103 games, finishing with the second best record in the majors but did not make the playoffs as their NL West rival Braves won 104 games. Baker has managed some of the greatest players of the post-expansion era from Barry Bonds to Sammy Sosa to Ken Griffey Jr. to Joey Votto to Bryce Harper. After enduring yet another postseason heartbreak, we ask: what was his best team? And was it this year’s Nationals? Here are the ten candidates.

Let’s break them down:

1993 Giants: 103–59, Finished 2nd in NL West

Case For:

· It was his best team by regular season win total. Since MLB moved to a 162-game schedule, the ’93 Giants are the only 100-win team to miss the postseason.

· In his first season in San Francisco, Barry Bonds was the best player in baseball, winning a second consecutive NL MVP. He batted .336/.458/.677 with 46 homers, 123 RBI, 129 runs scored and 29 steals. His 9.9 WAR was his best of any year prior to his steroid-infused seasons in the early 2000s.

Case Against:

· The team didn’t have a true ace, a dominant starter that could halt a losing streak…like the eight-game skid in mid-September that allowed the Braves to leapfrog them in the NL West race. Bill Swift won 21 games that year, finishing with a 2.82 ERA. But he had a six-start stretch from mid-August into mid-September where the Giants lost five of his six starts while he posted a 5.91 ERA.

1997 Giants: 90–72, won NL West (lost 3–0 to Marlins in NLDS)

Case For:

· Barry Bonds was on the team? Bonds hit 40 homers while posting a .446 on-base. He stole 37 bases, his final year with at least 30 steals.

Case Against:

· The team had a negative run differential, and was summarily dismissed by the Marlins in three games in the NLDS. Baker’s ’93 team and later San Francisco teams were better, both offensively and on the pitching side.

2000 Giants: 97–65, won NL West (lost 3–1 to Mets in NLDS)

Case For:

· In the first year at then Pac Bell Park, the 2000 Giants scored 925 runs, 53 runs more than any other Dusty Baker-managed club. Their +178 run differential is also the best of any Baker-run club.

· Jeff Kent (.334/.424/.596, 33 HR, 125 RBI) stole an NL MVP from his teammate, Bonds (.306/.440/.688, 49 HR, 106 RBI). J.T. Snow (19 HR, 96 RBI) and Ellis Burks (24 HR, 96 RBI) were excellent complimentary pieces.

Case Against:

· Like many of his San Francisco teams, the 2000 squad lacked an ace. Livan Hernandez won 17 games but posted a 3.75 ERA, above league average but not dominant. After Livan, it was Russ Ortiz (5.01 ERA in 195.2 IP), Shawn Estes (4.26 ERA in 190.1 IP), and Kirk Reuter (3.96 ERA in 184 IP).

· The dominant Giants offense disappeared after a Game One win in the NLDS vs. the Mets.

2002 Giants: 95–66, first in NL West (lost 4–3 to Angels in World Series)

Case For:

· This was one of Dusty’s best pitching staffs in San Francisco. The team allowed just 616 runs, second fewest in the NL (Atlanta: 565).

· This team lacked the offensive depth of previous Giants’ teams but Jeff Kent (.313, 37 HR, 108 RBI) and Barry Bonds (.370/.582/.799, 46 HR, 110 RBI) were arguably the best one-two punch in the majors.

Case Against:

· This is one of Dusty’s best teams. The pitching staff collapsed in the Fall Classic, allowing ten runs over their final ten innings of work to lose the series.

· The offense could have been more balanced, especially in the World Series.

Kent and Bonds: .348 (16–46 AB), 7 HR, 13 RBI, 14 runs

Rest of Team: .265 (50–189 AB), 7 HR, 29 RBI, 30 runs

2003 Cubs: 88–74, first in NL Central (lost 4–3 to Marlins in NLCS)

Case For:

· Unlike his teams in San Francisco, the ’03 Cubs had an ace. Two, in fact. And you could argue that Carlos Zambrano in ’03 was better than any pitcher Baker had during his tenure in San Francisco.

Kerry Wood: 14–11, 3.20 ERA, 266 K in 211 IP

Mark Prior: 18–6, 2.43 ERA, 245 K in 211.1 IP

Zambrano: 13–11, 3.11 ERA, 168 K in 214 IP

· The ’03 Cubs pitching staff led the NL in strikeouts and were third in ERA (3.83).

Case Against:

· The ’03 Cubs’ +41 run differential is the second lowest (to ’97 Giants) of any of the ten candidates for Dusty Baker’s best teams.

· The team was not particularly strong defensively with sub-par corner outfielders (36-year old Moises Alou and 34-year old Sammy Sosa) and a below-average shortstop (Alex Gonzalez).

· The Cubs bullpen was mediocre…4.16 ERA, eighth in the NL. You could argue the iffy ‘pen led Dusty to lean on his starters more heavily than he might have liked. 22-year old Mark Prior led the majors, averaging 113.4 pitches per start and threw 249 pitches combined in his first two postseason games entering Game Six of the 2003 NLCS. After Game Six, he would make just 57 more starts in his big league career. The Cubs ‘pen posted a 7.88 ERA in the final three games of the LCS as the Cubs lost a 3–1 series lead to the Marlins.

2010 Reds: 91–71, won NL Central (lost 3–0 to Phillies in NLDS)

Case For:

· The 2010 Reds were an over-achieving team, thanks to their offense. Six players hit 18 or more homers. The Reds led the National League in homers (188) and runs scored (790).

· Joey Votto burst onto the scene, winning the NL MVP by batting .324/.424/.600 with 37 homers and 113 RBI.

Case Against:

· The pitching staff was fairly pedestrian. Bronson Arroyo (17–10) and Johnny Cueto (12–7) were the only starters to post double-digit win totals. They were quickly swept by the pitching-rich Phillies in the 2010 NLDS, getting no-hit by Roy Halladay in Game One of that series.

2012 Reds: 97–65, first in NL Central (lost 3–2 to Giants in NLDS)

Case For:

· The 2012 Reds allowed fewer runs than any other Dusty Baker-managed club…Only the Rays (577) allowed fewer runs across MLB than the Reds (588) in 2012.

· Baker’s starters were incredibly durable. His starting five: Johnny Cueto, Mat Latos, Homer Bailey, Bronson Arroyo, and Mike Leake combined to start 161 of the Reds’ 162 games that season.

· Besides the dominant starters, the Reds featured Aroldis Chapman as their closer. He was electric, posting a 1.51 ERA while converting 38 of 43 saves.

Case Against:

· The 2012 Reds jumped out to a 2–0 series lead vs. the Giants in the 2012 NLDS and then collapsed losing three consecutive games at home. The team went 3–24 AB with RISP over the final three games including a Scott Rolen strikeout with the tying runs on-base to end the series.

· You could argue that the team lacked a true ace. This squad could have easily won the NL pennant that season had they gotten past the Giants and faced off with the Cardinals in the NLCS.

2013 Reds: 90–72 (2nd Wild Card, lost to Pirates in Wild Card Game)

Case For:

· This team had a superb top-of-the-lineup with Shin-Soo Choo (.423 OBP, 107 Runs), Brandon Phillips (18 HR, 103 RBI), Joey Votto (.435 OBP, 24 HR, 101 Runs) and Jay Bruce (30 HR, 109 RBI).

Case Against:

· The 2012 squad was probably better even though the 2013 team had a better run differential.

· The team’s significant offensive threats were lefties. Francisco Liriano started the NL Wild Card Game for the Pirates and dominated the Reds, eliminating them from postseason contention.

2016 Nationals: 95–67, first in NL East (lost 3–2 to Dodgers in NLDS)

Case For:

· The 2016 Nationals had arguably the best pitcher in the NL (Max Scherzer: 20–7, 2.96 ERA, 284 K) and one of the best hitters: Daniel Murphy (.347, 25 HR, 104 RBI).

· Six batters recorded 20 or more homers. And Bryce Harper had a down year: .243 AVG, 24 HR, 86 RBI)!

Case Against:

· After an historic MVP season in 2015, Bryce Harper played through injuries and wasn’t an impact player after early May. Strasburg missed the postseason due to a flexor mass strain.

2017 Nationals: 97–65, won NL East

Case For:

· The 2017 Nationals may be Baker’s most balanced team. He has a number of elite offensive players: Ryan Zimmerman (36 HR, 108 RBI), Bryce Harper (1.008 OPS, 29 HR, 87 RBI), Anthony Rendon (.301, 25 HR, 100 RBI), and Daniel Murphy (.322, 23 HR, 93 RBI). And despite being plagued by injuries, Trea Turner had 46 steals in 54 attempts while batting .284 with 75 runs in just 98 games.

· Oh, and the NL ERA Leaders from this season: Clayton Kershaw (2.31), Max Scherzer (2.51), Stephen Strasburg (2.52), Robbie Ray (2.89) and Gio Gonzalez (2.96)!

Case Against:

· The Nationals had a 4.41 bullpen ERA, eleventh in the National League. BUT after acquiring Ryan Madson, Brandon Kintzler, and Sean Doolittle, the bullpen stabilized. The ‘pen was a run better (3.36 ERA) from July 16, the day the team traded for Doolittle and Madson, through the end of the season.

· Injuries. This club was snake-bit. Key offseason acquisition, Adam Eaton, tore his ACL back in April. And Bryce Harper missed the final month and a half after an ugly knee injury. Harper’s mediocre postseason performance reflected a player still working his way back from injury.

10 Things I Think I Think for Friday, October 13, 2017 was originally published in Our Game on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.