Sunday, May 31, 2020

And a Child Shall Lead Them

Tom "Thumbs" Hoepfner of the Flemington Neshanock shared with me the below email exchange with the Baseball Hall of Fame.  It's clearly a story worthy of a far greater audience and Tom kindly agreed to share it on this blog.  It just goes to show you can't start them too young!


Charlie Hoepfner

To the Baseball Hall of Fame

My 7 year old son Charlie is a baseball fanatic.  He is sad there is no baseball going on.  He is missing playing on his Little League team.  We were planning on taking him to his sixth stadium, Yankee Stadium, this summer.  No Phillies Baseball Camp where he goes and I work.  No trip to Williamsport this year and my 19th century baseball team will not be playing at the Ommegang Brewery this year so no return trip to Cooperstown.

To help offset some of this we recently purchased the 2020 Hall of Fame Almanac which he is obsessed with.  I don't know how many other 7 years old's are having dinner conversations about Earl Averill and Kiki Cuyler.  He has calculated almost every statistical thing he can think of in that book.

Today he said, "Derek Jeter's batting average doesn't make sense."  I asked him to show me and he said he divided the hits by at bats and the numbers didn't match. I tried it too and he was right.  In the book, it lists Jeter as 3,465 for 12,602 which rounded up to .275.  He added the at bats per season and said it should be 11,195.  I asked him what do you think happened and he said, "They probably did plate appearances."  So we looked that up and sure enough he was right.

Does the Hall of Fame have Summer Internships for 7 year olds?

Thanks for taking the time to read and for having the virtual hours and Starting 9 exhibits and keeping baseball alive for those of us missing it so badly.

Tom Hoepfner




Hi Tom!

Thanks for your note!  We apologize for this error but we are so impressed with your son's keen eye!

We will make this correction in the 2021 Almanac.

We hope you and your son can come visit us in Cooperstown soon!  We'd love to show you around our Library.

Sincerely,

Craig Muder
Director of Communications
National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum

Thursday, May 21, 2020

Memorial Days Past (Long Past)

Looking backward it's hard to appreciate how much holiday baseball games meant to major league club owners.  Today, or at least in the pre-pandemic today, night baseball allows anyone who can afford it, to attend almost any local home game.  Back in the nineteenth century, however, Sunday baseball was largely prohibited and day games the rest of the week were not an option for the average working person.  No wonder holiday dates became known as "plums" which were often the cause of long and acrimonious debates among club owners.  Of the three summer holidays, Memorial Day, or Decoration Day as it was first known, is the one that "grew up" with major league baseball.  Originally held on May 30th, the first Decoration Day took place in 1868 when grateful citizens placed flowers on the graves of the Union dead.  In Brooklyn that first day of remembrance started out in "drizzling rain and cold mists," but "patriotic hearts were not dampened."  Representatives of various Grand Army of the Republic posts visited the then independent city's cemeteries with the main observation at the Cypress Hills cemetery.  The only national cemetery in New York City, Cypress Hills, according to an 1870 report, was then the final resting place of 3170 Union soldiers and 461 Confederate Prisoners of War.


 Cypress Hills National Cemetery, Brooklyn 

Base ball was also on tap that same afternoon at the Capitoline Grounds, although not as part of the day's observations.  Trying to get some game experience for Rynie Wolters, their new pitching acquisition, the Mutual Club scheduled a "social game" with the Star Club of Brooklyn.  The Brooklyn Daily Union took a dim view of the game, claiming that the "social" characterization was simply a ploy to circumvent the rule requiring Wolters to complete a 30 day waiting period before playing for the Mutuals in a match game. The paper believed that some of the Star Club members demonstrated their own disagreement with the idea by not showing up, leaving their team two short when the game got underway.  The contest did give the Mutuals some experience with Wolters although not the kind they anticipated because he didn't show up, a not uncommon occurrence with the difficult pitcher.  However his absence allowed the two clubs to abandon the pretense of a "social" game and play a true match game.  While the Star Club quickly filled the vacancies in their lineup, their weakened team was no match for the Mutuals and the Brooklyn team was probably fortunate to lose by only a 28-6 margin.


Brooklyn Daily Union - June 1, 1868

When the National Association, baseball's first professional league, got underway just three years later, in 1871, one game was played on Decoration day, a contrast in opponents that illustrated one of the new league's major weaknesses.  Hosting the game were the Boston Red Stockings, who, while they didn't win the first Association pennant, dominated the rest of the league's brief existence winning all four remaining flags.  The opposition was provided by the short lived Rockford Forest City's who lasted only one year, compiling a forgettable 4-21 record.  On that day however, the Rockford team more than held their own even though they were up against future Hall of Fame pitcher Albert Spalding.  The game at Boston's South End Grounds was tied 10-10 going to the ninth when Boston, batting first on this occasion, pushed across one run and kept Rockford off the board to avoid an embarrassing defeat.  Fortunate on this occasion, Boston apparently didn't learn anything about not taking such teams for granted.  Two years later, this time on July 4th, in professional baseball's first doubleheader, they lost to the Elizabeth Resolutes in what has to be the biggest upset in the Association's five year history.


Chicago's National League 1876 Championship team included Ross Barnes, Cal McVey and Hall of Fame members Deacon White and Albert Spalding all of whom were recruited from the Boston Red Stockings

While the National Association was probably doomed anyway, its demise was hastened when William Hulbert lured the core of the Boston team to Chicago and then helped create the National League.  Whoever made up the schedule for the league's inaugural 1876 season knew what they were doing, scheduling the first return visit of the former Boston stars for the Decoration Day holiday.  The game attracted a crowd of 10-12,000, which the Boston Globe claimed was the largest ever in Boston and perhaps in any city in the country.  Nor was it a passive audience as the "interest and anxiety" in the park was "as if the fate of the nation had depended upon it."  So large was the turnout that the crowd quickly filled the seats and spilled on to the field delaying the game for about a half an hour.  And the huge throng was not there to verbally assault their former heroes as the four were greeted with "shouts of welcome."  Although Chicago prevailed 5-1, the Globe felt there was no disgrace in what it called "a plucky and brilliant losing game."  Anticipating cartoonist Walt Kelly's classic line in his Pogo comic strip almost a century later ("We have met the enemy and he is us"), the paper ran the below headline:




Boston Daily Globe - May 31, 1876

As major league baseball developed in the 1870's and 1880's it wasn't long before someone decided to copy Harry Wright's 1873 idea of a morning-afternoon, separate admission, holiday doubleheader.  In 1884, the Brooklyn and New York clubs in the American Association gave the idea a different twist.  In the morning, the Brooklyn team, called "the Brooklyn's" by the local media, played the Indianapolis club at Washington Park while in East Harlem, the Metropolitans, or Mets, hosted St. Louis at Metropolitan Park (aka - "The Dump").  Then instead of repeating the match ups in the afternoon, the visiting teams switched cities (Brooklyn was an independent city at the time) so St. Louis played in Brooklyn while Indianapolis moved over to New York.  After a year's lapse, the practice was resumed in 1886 for what was apparently the last time giving those who attended both games in either city a unique experience.  It's not that difficult to see four major league teams play in person on the same day, Paul Zinn and I did it in 2000. Those nineteenth century fans, however, have the distinction of seeing three different major league teams play on the same day in the same ball park.  Sadly, this Memorial Day, we will have a different distinction, the dubious one of being the first fans since 1880 to experience Memorial Day without baseball. 


Thursday, May 7, 2020

Record Setting Frustration

Little information survives about the players reaction to the legalization of Sunday baseball in New York City, but it's not hard to imagine how the Dodger players felt on the all night train ride from Boston after Saturday's twenty-six inning marathon.  Speaking for everyone, Tom Rice of the Eagle said the players and writers "would gladly have welcomed a week of fishing" instead, but such was not the case.  Playing on the one day most people were off from work was an obvious advantage for Charles Ebbets, but the benefits went beyond the obvious.  Unlike the Giants and Yankees who shared the Polo Grounds, Ebbets Field was available to the Dodgers every Sunday.  As a result, Brooklyn hosted 20 Sunday home games in 1920 compared to 13 for the Giants and 12 for the Yankees.  Equally important was the fact that Sunday baseball was only permissible in five of the eight National League cities.  With each team playing 11 games in Brooklyn, it made financial sense to move a weekday game to Sunday by bringing visiting teams from places like Boston, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia to Brooklyn for just one game.  In this case the Dodgers would play in Brooklyn on Sunday in between games in Boston on Saturday and Monday.


Boston Herald - May 4, 1920

Since the Saturday game lasted until 7:00, probably about two hours later than usual, the Dodgers must have been on a late train from Boston, the equivalent of today's red-eye plane flight.  By Sunday morning they were at Ebbets Field for a 3:00 game with the Phillies who had made a similar, but shorter  journey from Philadelphia.  Proving that Sunday baseball was a draw some 15-17,000 fans "shivered" through the contest which featured Burleigh Grimes for the Dodgers and George Smith for Philadelphia.  Even though his team had effectively played a triple-header the day before, Dodger manager Wilbert Robinson made only one lineup change, Otto Miller as catcher.  Once again the Dodger offense couldn't get started and Brooklyn trailed 3-0 heading to the bottom of the seventh.  Suddenly, however, the Brooklyn bats woke up and hits by Hi Myers and Ed Konetchy plated two runs (Brooklyn's first in 27 innings) but the Dodgers still trailed 3-2 heading to the ninth.  Wonderfully lapsing into nineteenth century baseball terminology, Rice wrote that with "one hand out," Zack Wheat came to plate.  The count went full when the future Hall of Famer deposited the next pitch over the right field fence to send the game to extra innings.


Casey Stengel in front of Ebbets Field's legendary right field wall.  Stengel's experience playing the wall as a Dodger helped him as a visiting player, but on May 2, 1920 there was a new challenge.

One wonders if there wasn't at least one Dodger player who wanted no part of extra innings regardless of who won.  For the next four innings, not only were there no runs, neither side managed a base hit. In the top of the thirteenth however, Philadelphia used a single, double and a sacrifice fly to score the go ahead run.  The Phillies might have had more, but former Dodger Casey Stengel came up short in an attempted steal of home.  Stengel was not done trying to hurt his former teammates however.  With one out in the bottom of the inning, Robinson sent pitcher Clarence Mitchell up to pinch hit for Grimes.  Mitchell hit a long fly ball to the right field where Stengel who had plenty of experience playing the difficult right field wall was waiting.  On this day, however, a new challenge had been added.  The prior Sunday, temporary seats had been erected in right field for an expected overflow crowd against the Giants.  Afterwards the seats were stacked against the right field wall, giving Stengel a new obstacle to deal with.  Casey was up to the challenge and made a "splendid catch."  The hard luck on Mitchell's part anticipated his experience in the 1920 World Series where he became the only player in World Series history to hit into an unassisted triple play - again on a hard hit ball.


Brooklyn Daily Eagle - May 4, 1920

Once the Phillies recorded the last out, the Dodger headed back for the train station after another thirteen innings  (2 hours and 6 minutes) of frustration.  Wisely, Dodger manager Robinson had left Sherry Smith, Monday's starting pitcher (along with Cadore) behind in Boston.  The next afternoon saw the Dodgers back at Braves Field once again in "threatening weather" before a crowd of about 3,000.  Dana Fillington was on the mound for the Braves and once again a classic pitcher's duel developed.  Brooklyn scored  in the fifth, but Boston matched it in the sixth and for the third consecutive day in two cities, the Dodgers were headed for extra innings.  Little happened in the extra frames until the seventeenth when the Braves Rabbit Maranville tried to end the proceedings by stealing home, but was thrown out.  Finally Boston mercifully put the Dodgers out of their misery with three straight singles in the nineteenth for a 2-1 victory.


Boston Globe - May 4, 1920

The game lasted a little over three hours so the Dodgers had played 58 innings in three days in just over 9 hours or about 10 minutes an inning.  Unsurprisingly, the three consecutive marathons set a record for innings played in three days, breaking the old record (45) perhaps also unsurprisingly set by Brooklyn in 1917.  Interestingly, just four years later, in 1924, Brooklyn would come close to breaking their own record, playing 51 innings in three days.  That came about because Brooklyn played, and won, three straight doubleheaders in Philadelphia with one extra inning game and one game going less than nine.  At the moment, however, the concern in Brooklyn was the team's offensive woes.  All told, Dodger batters went 27 for 187 in the three games, a .144 batting average.  Worst of all were Konetchy and Bernie Neis who hit just .095.  The Dodgers, in winning the 1920 National League pennant, would go on to hit .277 for the season, making a prophet of Maxwell who said that in the early season batters would hit about 50% of their normal averages. At least the Dodgers didn't have to deal with extra innings the next day. The weather gods took pity and the game was rained out!

Friday, May 1, 2020

A Hundred Years Ago Today - Major League Baseball's Longest Game

While the 2020 baseball season will definitely be like no other, when, or if, the games finally begin, there will be at least one thing in common with past seasons.  Similar to the beginning of every other season going back to the beginning of organized baseball, fans will be optimistic about their club's chances.  That was certainly the case a century ago when the Brooklyn Dodgers opened the 1920 season.  Looking to give local fans some objective basis for their hopes, Tom Rice of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, turned to Robert "Tiny" Maxwell of the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger, who, after seeing every team play in spring training, proclaimed Brooklyn a legitimate "dark horse" threat.  Perhaps better remembered as a football player and official, (the Maxwell Trophy is named in his memory) the Philadelphia scribe, who was anything but tiny, favored the Dodgers because of their strong pitching staff.   Maxwell thought Brooklyn would have an extra advantage early in the season when, in his opinion, hitters were only 50% as effective as they would be in June and July.    Unfortunately for the Dodgers, however, that premise was a twin edged sword since pitchers, no matter how talented, need some run support, a point which would be proven beyond all doubt the first weekend in May of 1920.


Boston Herald - May 2, 1920

One hundred years ago, this very day, the Dodgers were in Boston for the second game of a four game series which was sandwiched around Brooklyn's first one game home stand of the season.  The pitching matchup was between Leon Cadore of the Dodgers and Joe Oeschger of the Braves, two pitchers about to go where no pitcher has ever gone, before or since.  While the weather was threatening, the game went ahead before 2,500 to 4,000 fans who Rice described as both "frozen and damp."  After four scoreless innings, the Dodgers got on the scoreboard in the fifth when Ivy Olson drove in Ernie Krueger with the game's first run.  Boston matched that in the bottom of the sixth with a rally that featured a single, a double and a triple, but only one run.  The Braves could have had at least one more run, but Tony Boeckel of Boston was thrown out at the plate on Rabbit Maranville's double.  The play was apparently something less than a work of art, however. Ed Cunningham of the Boston Herald  claimed Wally Hood's throw from center was headed for the Braves dugout until Cadore intercepted it and threw out Boeckel at home.



The game remained tied 1-1 in the bottom of the ninth, but Boston put runners on second and third with only one out.  After walking the next hitter intentionally, Cadore got out of the inning when second baseman Olson converted Charlie Pick's ground ball into an inning ending double play.  According to Cunningham, the play "happened so quickly everyone was dazed." While Cadore had allowed only one run, his effort thus far hadn't been especially noteworthy since Boston had a runner on base every inning, thanks to eleven hits and one walk.  Even so, with any kind of offensive production, the Brooklyn pitcher would have been celebrating a a win, but in a snapshot of the entire weekend the Dodgers had managed only six hits and one run off of Oeschger.  The Boston pitcher had to have been equally frustrated and doubtless remembered that just a year and a day earlier, as a member of the Phillies, he had pitched a twenty inning tie game against Brooklyn.  And, as Oeschger may have feared, history repeated itself for the remainder of that long, long game.


Boston Globe - May 3, 1920

After five scoreless extra innings, Boston threatened to win in the bottom of the fifteenth, but couldn't push a run across.  Brooklyn's best chance came in the top of the seventeenth when they had first and third and only one out, but Boston turned in a rally killing double play of their own.  Brooklyn's Chuck Ward grounded to Maranville at short who threw out Zack Wheat at home, but Hank Gowdy's throw to first was wild and Walter Holke could only knock it down.  When Ed Konetchy tried to score on the play, Holke's return throw home was off to one side, but Gowdy caught it and "recklessly hurled himself across the plate" with the ball in his bare hand to tag Konetchy's "gleaming spikes."  With perhaps understandable hyperbole, Cunningham called it the "the greatest play ever staged on a Boston diamond."  As disappointed as he probably was, Rice graciously admitted it was "a hair raising double play." And so the game rolled on.  Many years later, one sportswriter remembered that after the eighteenth or nineteenth inning, both pitchers understandably stopped taking any warm up pitches.  In spite of the bad weather James O'Leary of the Boston Globe claimed the small crowd remained in their seats and from the eighteenth on, cheered both pitchers as they left the mound after another scoreless inning.


Boston Globe - May 2, 1920

Finally after the Braves went out in the bottom of the twenty-sixth inning, umpire Barry McCormick called the game despite the pleas of  the Dodgers Ivy Olson who begged to play one more inning supposedly because he wanted to be able to say he had played three games in one day.  Incredibly after allowing 11 hits in the first nine innings, Cadore only gave up two in the last twelve while Oeschger was even better, pitching a no-hitter for the last nine innings.  A few days later, Cadore attributed their extra inning dominance to a combination of greater focus when one bad pitch could lose the game and batters who were over anxious for the same reason.  The twenty-six innings broke the prior record for extra inning games, a 1906, twenty-four inning affair, a new record that has never been broken. Most modern discussion of "longest" games tends to focus on time elapsed rather than innings played.  Perhaps making the 1920 game even more impressive a century later is that it took only 3 hours and 50 minutes to play almost three games.  Cadore also tied the record for assists by a pitcher with 12, matching Nick Altrock's performance in a 1908 ten inning game.


Brooklyn Daily Eagle - May 2, 1920

How did pitching twenty-six innings effect the two pitchers?  Cadore didn't pitch again until May 9th when he threw four shutout innings against the Phillies, but was knocked out in the fifth.  Given another extended rest, Cadore was back on form on May 21st when he shut out the defending champion Cincinnati Reds.  The right hander proved to be an important part of Brooklyn's pennant winning pitching staff, going 15-14 with a 2.62 ERA.  Oeschger seemed to suffer the greater short term impact as he was knocked out in each of his next two starts before recovering to go 15-13 with a 3.46 ERA.  A year later, the Boston pitcher won 20 games, by far the best season of his career.  Interestingly both pitchers long term performance was basically the same before and after 1920.  Cadore was 28-27 before 1920 and 25-31 afterwards while Oeschger was 31-44 and then 36-49.   While there were no winners that cold May afternoon, at least the Boston players headed to their hotel rooms or boarding houses knowing that they had the next day off due to the prohibition on Sunday baseball in Massachusetts.  Not so fortunate were the Brooklyn players who headed for the train station and the overnight ride to New York City for part two of their lost weekend.  Stay tuned.