Runs and Bases: the 1890's, Part 2

[SWC75]

The turbulence of the first half of the 1890’s settled down as the century came to an end. There was only one major league: the National League, and they had the best players and the best teams. The problem was that there were 12 of them. The league didn’t think to split into divisions and have a championship series, as it should have. That condemned teams to finish way out of the race and made that size of a league unsustainable.

What made it worse, (but eventually solved the problem), was “syndicate ownership”. That’s not a syndicate of investors buying a team: it’s one owner or group of owners owning more than one team. The stronger teams simply bought the weaker teams and used them as a sort of major league farm team. There was also the issue of the stadiums. They were made of wood and tended to burn down frequently or to simply be replaced with a larger one. When a new stadium as built, the owners of the team would decide that they could make more money with the team that played there and transfer all their best players to that franchise. The fans of the team on the wrong end of such maneuvers would lose interest and that team might be moved or simply go out of business.

The highly successful Baltimore Orioles became, largely, the highly successful Brooklyn Superbas. The Orioles went out of business after the 1899 season. Barney Dreyfuss owned both the Louisville Colonels and the Pittsburgh Pirates and transferred two young stars, Honus Wagner and Fred Clarke, to the latter team. The Colonels also disappeared after 1899. But the worst story was the Cleveland Spiders, a strong team though most of the decade. They were owned by the Robison brothers who also owned the St. Louis Browns, who for one season in 1899 became the Perfectos using the best players form Cleveland, (including Cy Young, Cupid Childs and Jesse Burkett), before becoming the Cardinals in 1900.

St. Louis had been a dismal 39-111 in 1898, (they’d been 29-102 in 1897). But then the Robisons bought the team. They already owned the Spiders but felt that there was a bigger future in St. Louis, where the team improved to 84-67 and survived to become one of the most successful franchises of the coming century. Meanwhile, in Cleveland, Stanley Robison had pronounced the Spiders to be a “sideshow”. They skipped spring training for the Spiders. They even held Cleveland’s opening day in St. Louis. In their first 16 real home games, the Spiders averaged 199 fans a game. The Robisons decided that the Spiders could make more money as a road show. The Spiders wound up losing 101 road games and went 20-134 overall, the worst record in history. They, too went out of business after the 1899 season. With the disbanding of the original Washington Senators, the National League opened the new century with 8 teams, something they would have for the next six decades. They also banned syndicate ownership, which gave them the stability for their franchises to survive.

That left us with the Braves, (who would finally be named that in 1912), the Cubs, (first called that in 1903), the Giants, the Phillies, the Dodgers, (who would be called that from 1911-12 and then from 1932 onward), the Pirates, the Reds and the Cardinals. The Braves are the only franchise what have been there continuously since the National Association was formed in 1871 to the present day- and their roots lie in the original Cincinnati Red Stockings, the top touring team of the pre Association era. The Cubs actually predate the Boston version of the Red Stockings, having been formed in 1870. But they were out of business for two seasons after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, so they haven’t been continuously in operation from 1871 onward. The Giants and the Phillies both date from 1883, after William Hulbert and his hatred of “river cities” died. The Dodgers, Pirates, Reds and Cardinals all originated in the American Association.

1895- National League

Runs Produced
Hughie Jennings BAL 280
Sam Thompson PHI 278
Joe Kelley BAL 272
Ed Delahanty PHI 244
Ed McKean CLE 242
Willie Keeler BAL 236
Billy Hamilton PHI 233
Jesse Burkett CLE 231
Steve Brodie BAL 217
Bill Everitt CHI 214

Bases Produced
Billy Hamilton PHI 449
Ed Delahanty PHI 428
Joe Kelley BAL 414
Sam Thompson PHI 410
Jesse Burkett CLE 403
Bill Lange CHI 397
Jake Stenzel PIT 387
Bill Joyce WAS 377
Hugh Duffy BOS 364
Willie Keeler BAL 363

1896- National League

Runs Produced
Hughie Jennings BAL 246
Ed Delahanty PHI 244
Joe Kelley BAL 240
Willie Keeler BAL 231
Jesse Burkett CLE 226
Jack Doyle BRO 216
Mike Tiernan NY 214
Cupid Childs CLE 211
Mike Smith PIT 209
Hugh Duffy BOS 205

Bases Produced
Joe Kelley BAL 460
Billy Hamilton BOS 438
Ed Delahanty PHI 414
Jesse Burkett CLE 400
Bill Joyce WAS 392
Mike Tiernan NY 381
Bill Dahlen CHI 377
Willie Keeler BAL 374
Bill Lange CHI 367
George Van Haltren NY 366

1897- National League

Runs Produced
Hugh Duffy BOS 248
George Davis NY 237
Jimmy Collins BOS 229
Joe Kelley BRO 226
Nap Lajoie PHI 225
Jake Stenzel BRO 225
Willie Keeler BAL 219
Hughie Jennings BAL 210
Billy Hamilton BOS 210
Fred Tenney BOS 209

Bases Produced
Willie Keeler BAL 403
Fred Clarke LOU 383
Billy Hamilton BOS 381
Jake Stenzel BAL 375
George Davis NY 373
Ed Delahanty PHI 371
Joe Kelley BAL 361
Hugh Duffy BOS 358
Bill Lange CHI 351
Kip Selbach WAS 350

1898- National League

Runs Produced
Nap Lajoie PHI 234
Hughie Jennings BAL 221
Ed Delahanty PHI 203
Jimmy Collins BOS 203
Dan McGann BAL 200
Hugh Duffy BOS 197
Jimmy Ryan CHI 197
John McGraw BAL 196
George Van Haltren NY 195
Herman Long BOS 192

Bases Produced
Ed Delahanty PHI 384
George Van Haltren NY 365
John McGraw BAL 359
Jimmy Ryan CHI 357
Jimmy Collins BOS 338
Jesse Burkett CLE 337
Hughie Jennings BAL 331
Billy Hamilton BOS 330
Dummy Hoy LOU 328
Fred Clarke LOU 328

1899- National League

Runs Produced
Ed Delahanty PHI 263
Jimmy Williams PIT 236
Honus Wagner LOU 207
Buck Freeman WAS 204
Willie Keeler BRO 200
Hugh Duffy BOS 200
Dan McGann WAS 197
Joe Kelley BRO 195
Elmer Flick PHI 194
Kip Selbach CIN 189

Bases Produced
Ed Delahanty PHI 423
Jimmy Williams PIT 405
Chick Stahl BOS 389
John McGraw BAL 378
Buck Freeman WAS 375
Jesse Burkett STL 371
Honus Wagner LOU 365
Bobby Wallace STL 361
Fred Clarke LOU 360
Fred Tenney BOS 356

Cumulative Run Production Ranking

Cap Anson 119
King Kelly 76
Hugh Duffy 75
Dan Brouthers 73
Jim O’Rourke 64

Harry Stovey 57
Roger Connor 55
Sam Thompson 54
Ross Barnes 49
Deacon White 49

Cal McVey 47
George Gore 46
Ed Delahanty 44
George Wright 41
Tip O’Neill 38

Long John Reilly 37
Joe Kelley 33
Hughie Jennings 32
Hardy Richardson 31
Charles Comisky 30

Charlie Jones 28
Cupid Childs 28
Paul Hines 28
Abner Dalrymple 27
George Davis 26

Cumulative Base Production Ranking

Cap Anson 91
Harry Stovey 88
Billy Hamilton 83
Dan Brouthers 83
Jim O’Rourke 73

Roger Conner 70
Ed Delahanty 60
King Kelly 57
Hugh Duffy 53
Ross Barnes 50

Charlie Jones 45
Abner Dalrymple 42
George Wright 41
Pete Browning 41
Paul Hines 40

Lip Pike 39
Mike Tiernan 35
Joe Kelley 34
George Gore 34
Cal McVey 33

Jesse Burkett 32
Jimmy Ryan 30
George Van Haltren 29
Long John Reilly 28
Arlie Latham 28

 

[SWC75]

This takes us to the end of the 19th century and confirms CAP ANSON’S reputation of being the century’s best player. Others may have been as good or better in individual years or for periods of time. But his career began with the formation of the National Association in 1871 and continued straight on through to 1897. He joined the Chicago White Stockings, who eventually became the Cubs, in the year the National league was formed, 1876 and played for them for 22 seasons, managing them for the last 19. He was the most prominent player in baseball in that time which allowed his racism to influence the game, (although he was hardly the only decision maker with racist attitudes), resulting in the ban of African Americans from the major leagues from 1887 until Jackie Robinson broke the color line in 1947. But he built up a statistical record that will be hard to beat, especially in the production of runs.

The first to candidates to take a run at his records, Napoleon Lajoie and Honus Wagner, both began their careers in this last segment of the 19th century, Lajoie in 1896, (he would play until 1916) and Wagner in 1897, (he would play until 1917), but I’m going to cover them in the next segment because that’s when they came to dominate the American and National Leagues, respectively.

But the greatest slugger of the 1890’s was ED DELAHANTY. He was called “Big Ed” but he’s only listed at 6-1 170, (Bill Jenkinson said he weighed 190 in his prime: most baseball weights are what the player weighed when they first came up (the 2007 Who’s Who in Baseball lists Barry Bonds at 185 pounds when it was common knowledge that he weighed over 230 by that time). It was his bat that was really big.

He was one of five brothers that played major league baseball. Bill James, in his New Historical Baseball Abstract, (pages 819-821), ranks the baseball playing families using his win share system and has the Delahantys at #6 behind the Alous, the DiMaggios, the Bondses, the Waners and the Boones, (he includes all generations), but ahead of the Griffeys, the Perrys, the Alomars’ the Bells and the Boyers.

He first became a big name in 1893 when he hit .368 and led the league with 19 home runs and 146 RBIs. He also had 35 doubles, 18 triples, stole 37 bases and scored 145 runs! In 1894 he was part of the Phillies’ all .400 hitting outfield with Sam Thompson and Billy Hamilton. He played left field and hit .404. Hamilton was in center, hitting .403 and Thompson was in right, hitting .415. Their back-up outfielder, Tom Turner, hit higher than any of them at .418. (The team batting average was .350!). But while everybody else started to fade in 1895 as the pitchers got used to the 60 foot distance, (it had been 50 feet), Big Ed kept going, hitting .404 again with 70 extra base hits, (up from 62 the previous year). He followed that up by hitting .397 in 1896 and again led the league in homers with 13. Three years later he hit .400 for the third time, (.410) and led the league with 238 hits, including 55 doubles. Lifetime, he batted .346 with 809 extra base hits, including 101 home runs.

Jenkinson has a chapter on him in “Baseball’s Ultimate Power”. He hit four homers in a game in 1896 in Chicago’s West Side Park. Unlike Bobby Lowe, were all over the fence and one went over the scoreboard. He also was noted as “directional hitter”, who could adjust his swing to any ballpark. He jumped to American league in 1902 and won its batting championship at .376, thus becoming the only man ever to lead both the National and American leagues in batting.

Early on he was noted as a comically bad fielder, committing an appalling 94 errors as a shortstop. But when moved to the outfield, he became an excellent fielder. Bill Dineen, who had pitched to Delahanty was interviewed in 1936, when Joe DiMaggio was a rookie and compared Joe to Del, (as Ed was often called). “The way he catches the ball and throws, his every move is taken from the same baseball mold that cast Ed Delahanty.” But it didn’t prevent Del from showing up in Bruce Nash and Alan Zullo’s “Baseball Hall of Shame”. In 1892, Cap Anson hit a ball into a “doghouse” that was used to store numbers for the manual scoreboard. It was in play and Del had to climb into the structure to retrieve the ball. He got stuck and Anson was able to circle the bases to the jeers of the Philadelphia crowd.

An opposing pitcher said: “When you pitch to Delahanty, you just want to shut your eyes, say a prayer and chuck the ball. The Lord only known what will happen after that.” That was the problem with Ed Delahanty’s life- you never knew what was going to happen. He was called “the Wild Irishman” and was famous for leading parades of admirers into every saloon in town. In a way, he was baseball’s equivalent of John L. Sullivan, as popular for his lifestyle as for his play. Big Ed lived big. Money was to be spent and he was usually broke until his next paycheck. And he drank way too much, especially on July 2, 1903, when he was on a train from Detroit to New York. Approaching Niagara Falls, he started brandishing a razor, talking about death and threatening passengers. He was put off the train and attempted to cross a bridge over the Niagara River on foot. He fell and was swept over the falls. Big Ed went out in a big way.

JESSE BURKETT was for years, also credited with hitting .400 three times. But half a century after his death, his 1899 batting average was recalculated from .402 to .396. Lifetime, he hit .338, (they used to have him at .342). Anyway, he was pretty good. A much smaller man that Delahanty, (5-8, 155), he was known for his speed and place-hitting ability. He was one of the game’s greatest bunters and holds the all-time record for inside the park home runs with 55. He scored enormous numbers of runs, as many as 160 in one season. He was, with Cupid Childs and Cy Young, one of the “big three” of the Cleveland Spiders, who were the third best team of the decade behind the Boston Beaneaters and the Baltimore Orioles until their demise. Jesse’ nickname was “The Crab”, a reference to his thin-skinned disposition. It was said that he was “one of the most constant and one of the rankest kidders in the business. That would be alright if he could take a kid himself but the moment somebody comes back at him…he goes wild and wants to fight.” Bill James tells a lengthy story about The Crab getting thrown out both games of a double header. “He … never drank, smoked or chewed tobacco and had a wicked tongue.”

Also on the Cleveland Spiders was LOU SOCKALEXIS, the first native American major league player, (there is some dispute over this). He was a Penobscot Indian and a college man who went to Holy Cross and Notre Dame. He had a legendary throwing arm, once throwing a ball 414 feet. He was clocked at 10 seconds in the 100 yard dash, which would have made him one of the fastest men in the world at that time. In his first year in Cleveland Sockalexis hit .338 with 16 steals in 66 games. Unfortunately, he had a weakness for alcohol and his drinking shorted his career to only three years.

It was probably exacerbated by the treatment he received by the fans. “If the big and small boys of Brooklyn and other cities find it a pleasure to shout at me I have no objections. No matter where we play I go through the same ordeal and . . . I am so used to it that at times I forget to smile at my tormentors ." Baseballreference.com says “Like Jackie Robinson 50 years later, the handsome, educated Sockalexis won over his detractors with his quiet dignity, his friendly smile, and most of all, his phenomenal talent.” But the shortness of his career and his subsequent life as a “vagrant” suggests otherwise. He eventually topped drinking but died of a heart attack at age 47. Ironically, Sockalexis reported that the most sympathetic player to him on the Cleveland team was “The Crab”, Jesse Burkett.

There’s also a dispute over whether or not the current Cleveland Indians franchise is named in honor of Lou Sockalexis. The Spiders were unofficially called “The Indians” in the newspapers of the time when Sockalexis was there. The Cleveland American League team was first named the Blues, then the Bronchos and then the Naps after their star Nap Lajoie until the name Indians was chosen in a 1915 fan poll. But Sockalexis had died recently, (December 1913), so the fans may have had him in mind.

When Babe Ruth had his first great year as a home run hitter in 1919, people wondered who held the major league record for home runs. The answer seemed to be BUCK FREEMAN, who had hit 25 for the National League’s Washington Senators in 1899. It was not realized that Ed Williamson had hit 27 for the Chicago White Stockings in 1884 in a bandbox park. But Freeman’s record was more representative of his whole career. He won two home run titles, one in the National league and the other in the American league.

Jenkinson also has a chapter of Freeman, ranking him as the third most power hitter of the 19th century, behind only Dan Brouthers and Roger Connor and ahead of Ed Delahanty and Sam Thompson. He was not big at 5-9 170 but Jenkinson describes him as “pound for pound likely as strong as any player in major league history”. Jenkinson makes the point that while 19th century players didn’t have steroids and didn’t lift weights in the way modern players do, they lifted plenty of weight in the jobs they typically had on the farm, in the mines or in the factories before becoming baseball players and in the off-season. Buck was a product of the coal mines, where he worked with his father. But Freeman was noted as the first baseball player to work out in a gym and was known for his physique. Per baseball reference.com “he swung from the heels with maximum power, looking to loft the ball over the outfield. “ Thus he may have been the first hitter to think entirely in terms of hitting home runs as opposed to a powerful hitter who just tried to make good contact and got them as a matter of course.

Jenkinson credits him with a 430 foot shot in Louisville that landed on the roof of a local distillery. (Delahanty would have been impressed.) He also hit one in Chicago that may have gone 440. Freeman had a short career as a hitter because, like Babe Ruth, he started as a pitcher and because of a dislocated shoulder he suffered in 1908. 1899 was his first full year as a hitter and he hit .318 with 19 doubles, 25 triples, 25 homers and 21 steals. He drove in 122 runs and scored 107. He didn’t go back to pitching. He did jump to the American League and wound up starring for the winners of the first modern World Series, the Boston Red Sox. But that’s another story.

It would be unthinkable these days for a player to walk away from the game when he could still play and make big money. But that’s what BILL LANGE did. His commitment to a career in baseball was always tenuous. In 1897 he held out, not because he wanted more money but so he could go see the Jim Corbett- Bob Fitzsimmons fight. And he left the game entirely after the 1899 season to get married and go into business with his father in law, who didn’t want his daughter married to a ball player. He was age 28. The marriage didn’t last but Lange’s retirement did. Lange was one of the first famous baseball players from San Francisco, a city that has produced enough of them to fill a wing in the Hall of Fame. Lange would not be one of them because he only played seven major league seasons: you need 10 to be considered.

But Bill James calls him “probably the greatest all-around athlete to play baseball in the 19th century”. Lange was 6-2 200 “with thin legs but a massive upper body….very speedy and was forever tearing around the bases”. He stole 399 bases in just 611 major league games and batted .330 lifetime. He was famous for his legendary catches including one famous but unverified story of him crashing through a fence to catch a game winning ball. He was the type of player to whom legends attached themselves. If something sounded like something Bill Lange would have done, then Bill Lange did it. There are many instances of baseball observers from that time who lived well into the 20th century putting Lange on their all-time team. Frank Chance compared him to Tris Speaker and Alfred Spink, the founder of the Sporting News, though he was the equal of Ty Cobb. Bill James describes him as “a nineteenth century Mickey mantle, with a little more defense and a little less offense” His nickname was “Little Eva” but nobody seems to know why.

Some mention should be made of PERRY WERDEN, a slugger in the mold of Cap Anson, Dan Brouthers, Roger Connor and Sam Thompson but whose greatest years came in what we now call the minor leagues.

In those days, all leagues competed with each other for public attention and, while it was clear that the National League was superior to the others but there were no farm systems. The minors were independent leagues what owned their own players. They might sell their contracts to teams representing larger cities from time to time to pay the bills but they could keep them all year if they wanted them. The differences in salary were not that great and sometimes minimal and players often chose to play for a ‘minor’ league team because they came from there or liked the place for some other reason.

Werden has huge for the time, 6-2 220.His full name was Percival Wheritt Werden but his nickname was “Moose”. He played in the National league in the late 1880’s early 1890’s and had a good record- good enough to have stayed in that league if he had wanted to. He played for Washington in the National league, moved to Toledo of the American Association, then back to NL with Baltimore and St. Louis. He also came back to the NL for a stint with Louisville in 1897. He batted .300 once and .282 lifetime. His home run high was only 8 but he had 29 triples one season, 20 in another, 18 in another and overall had 222 extra base hits in 695 games. He stole as many as 59 bases in a season, drove in 100 runs once and scored over 100 twice.

But, if Anson was the greatest major league player of the century, Werden is the greatest minor league player. He hit .341 lifetime in the minors, hit 134 home runs in winning 5 titles. He had 466 extra base hits in 1081 games. But he’s most known for what he did for the Minneapolis Millers of the Western League in 1894-95. He’d left St. Louis, his home town, in a salary dispute and signed with Minneapolis, which became his adopted home town, (he died there in 1934). They had a cozy ballpark there. In 1894 Werden hit .417 with 43 home runs and followed that up with .428 and 45 home runs the following year. Numbers like that wouldn’t be seen in baseball for a generation.

Of course that was in something called the “Western league”. But in 1901, the Western League got a new name: The American League.

 

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Great stuff. Thanks for putting these posts together, SWC75 -- I can only imagine the time and effort involved.