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2017 British Baseball Hall of Fame class announced

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Carter, Young and Smallwood join the British Baseball Hall of Fame

The 2017 elections to the British Baseball Hall of Fame have introduced three new inductees, increasing the class to 32.

Nick Carter and Ian Young were inducted from the modern ballot, with Don Smallwood MBE being elected by the historical vetting panel that was introduced in 2016.

Carter and Young are two of the most decorated Great Britain national team players of the past thirty years. The former was a mainstay on the GB team between 1996 and 2005, competing in six European Championships, whilst twice being the starting and winning pitcher in a decisive national championship game for the Brighton Buccaneers (1999 and 2001).

Young’s Great Britain career lasted 13 years between 2000 and 2013, the highlight of which being his ‘All-Tournament’ team performances for the side that won a silver medal at the 2007 European Championship.

Smallwood’s involvement in British baseball spanned six decades, during which he achieved considerable success as a player, most notably on the formidable Hull Aces teams of the 1960s and 1970s, and even more in a wide variety of administrative roles.  Upon passing on the news of his election, sadly I learned that he passed away earlier this year at the age of 84.

Full details about the three new members of the Hall, alongside bios for the other 29 already elected, can be found on the BBHoF website: http://www.bbhof.org.uk/

I’ve been involved in the BBHoF for several years and have now stepped up to the role of Chair. I’m taking over from Joe Gray who has done a huge amount of invaluable work over the past decade, both directly on the Hall of Fame and the wider Project for the Chronicling of British Baseball (Project COBB).

Thankfully Joe’s still involved as Secretary and I’m indebted to all his support and help provided.  I’ve got a list of research topics and Hall of Fame work ready for the off-season, so keep an eye out for those here on this website and at Project COBB.

If you’re interested in getting involved in looking at the game’s history on these shores, please do get in contact either via the comments below or using the contact details on the Project COBB website.

A History of Norwich baseball

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It’s always encouraging to see new clubs joining the British baseball leagues.

One of the new entrants to the BBF in 2017 are Norwich Iceni, particularly exciting for me as they are based in my home city.

As shown by BaseballSoftballUK’s Team Finder map, the area has a number of softball teams as part of the Norfolk Softball Association, but there’s plenty of space for baseball too.

The two nearest baseball blue flags belong to the Cambridge Royals/ Monarchs in Cambridgeshire, who brought baseball back to the city in 2011, and the Haverhill Blackjacks in Suffolk.

Norwich Iceni will be the first league team in the city since the Norwich Wanderers of the early 1990s, joining the UEA (University of East Anglia) Blue Sox who compete in the university leagues.

UEA, alongside Nottingham and Southampton, were one of the key places that helped get the University Baseball scene up and running again 10 years or so ago, and UEA graduates are part of the group that have formed Norwich Iceni.

Norwich baseball history

Thanks to the Iceni club being born, a local newspaper clip was uncovered and published on their website about the Norwich Wanderers being founded in 1991.

It explains that the team was formed in 1991 and that, as known at the time (and yet to be disproved) they were the first baseball team in the city’s history (outside of the UEA team).

The team was based in Heartsease, an estate to the north-east of the city centre, and the article includes several photos of the team, showing their red and white uniform.

Inspired by the newspaper clip and Norwich Iceni’s 2017 debut this coming Sunday, I’ve undertaken some research in the records we have digitised and available online as part of Project Cobb to put together what we know about the Norwich Wanderers.

If you have any further details, please do get in contact.

1991 – Friendlies?

Norwich Wanderers were formed in 1991. Whether they played in a league in their debut year, or played friendly games as and when they could, is not confirmed. The newspaper article states that they were expecting to play Mildenhall in 1991 and the Old Timers website notes that they played Norwich in this period so it’s possible they had a game or two that year.

1992 – BBF Anglia League

Norwich competed in a BBF Anglia League alongside Bury Saints B, Stevenage Knights, Tiptree Hotsports Rays and UEA Anglians.

The UEA Anglians were part of the university in Norwich and the press article states that the UEA had been running a baseball team for a couple of years prior to the Wanderers starting out in 1991.

The press article also shows an interesting link with Tiptree Hotsports Rays. Norwich were able to gain sponsorship from the local Hot Sports shop and so presumably the branch in Tiptree supported their local team for several years too.

Further details about the 1992 season have not been uncovered to this point. If you can fill in any blanks, please get in contact.

1993 – BBF Midlands Division One

In 1993, Norwich Wanderers competed in the BBF Midlands Division One (details from the Brit-Ball series). The teams were as follows:

  • Derby Crowns
  • Leicester Hawks
  • Long Eaton Sluggers
  • Newark Giants
  • Norwich Wanderers
  • Nottingham Pirates

The season started on 9 May and Norwich took an 18-14 defeat at the hands of Nottingham, with Newark Giants crushing Derby 44-2 (no ‘mercy’ rules in effect in this league, by the looks of it!).

One week later and Norwich took another loss, this time a heart-breaker against those Newark Giants. Newark got a 26-25 walk-off victory to send the Wanderers to an 0-2 start.

By 13 June Norwich had a 1-2 record, with the other results recorded and league table showing that the win must have come against either Derby or Long Eaton.

However, that’s where the Brit-Ball records end. A league table and results from the Midlands League are conspicuous by their absence from August onwards and the record of 1993 champions in Issue 7 doesn’t include a winner from the Midlands League.

That would all suggest that the League petered out for some reason during the course of the season and wasn’t completed.

1994 – BBF Division Three South

Norwich Wanderers were one of five new teams that joined the 10-team BBF Division Three South in 1994 (details from the Brit-Ball series and the Line Drive series)

The regular season standings were split into a North and South league, with Norwich being in the North, although teams faced each other over the two leagues.

North South
Cambridge Fellows Brighton Buccaneers B
Fulham Flames Burgess Hill Red Hats
Milton Keynes Truckers Eastbourne Aces
Norwich Wanderers Gloster Meteors B
Waltham Abbey Cardinals Guildford Mudcats

Thanks to the Brit-Ball records, we’re able to piece together Norwich’s entire season, with just one educated guess along the way.

Norwich started off their season on 8 May with a 24-14 victory over Fulham before splitting a double-header with Milton Keynes on 15 May. A comfortable 29-0 win over Waltham Abbey on 22 May gave the Wanderers a 3-1 start to the season before a rest weekend for the Spring Bank Holiday.

Norwich resumed their campaign on 5 June. Comparing against the published standings shows that they must have lost that day. The Brit-Ball records don’t show that result but they do show part of a 9-0 victory for Milton Keynes (presumably a forfeit) with their opponent obscured by the way the page has been scanned. It’s likely, if not 100% certain, that it was Norwich who forfeited that game.

The Wanderers then won six games in a row before facing off once again against Milton Keynes on 31 July. The Truckers won 13-4 and, with a couple of assumptions built in (the possible earlier forfeit loss to MK and guessing the likely tie-breaker), that would prove decisive in terms of splitting the teams in the final standings.

Norwich were handed a forfeit win on 7 August against Waltham Abbey and then edged a one-run contest with Brighton (17-16) on 14 August to put them on an 11-3 record for the season to that point.

A chastening 30-1 loss at the hands of Burgess Hill followed on 21 August and that proved to be Norwich’s last action of the season, as their final game against Guildford was forfeited by their opponents.

That all meant that Norwich had compiled a 12-4 record; however during the course of the season Cambridge Fellows and Eastbourne Aces withdrew from the league and results against those teams were removed from the standings. Three of Norwich’s wins came against Cambridge (two by way of forfeit) so their record in the final standings was 9-4 (Norwich didn’t play against Eastbourne).

Norwich ended the season with the same record as Milton Keynes, but the Truckers were crowned as the North division champions, with Norwich in second place. Burgress Hill won the South division, with Brighton coming second.

Issue 16 (July/August) of Brit-Ball includes batting and pitching leaders and there are three Norwich names in there: Wightman and Bond on the batting side, and Nock on the pitching side.

Listed below are Norwich’s full results and the final standings.

8 May. Fulham 14 – Norwich 24 (Nch Win-loss record: 1-0)
15 May (Double-header). Norwich 11 – Milton Keynes 26 (1-1)
15 May (DH). Norwich 16 – Milton Keynes 3 (2-1)
22 May. Waltham 0 – Norwich 29 (3-1)
29 May. No game
5 June. Norwich played and lost, possibly a 9-0 forfeit to Milton Keynes (3-2)
12 June. Gloster 11 – Norwich 16 (4-2)
19 June. No game 
26 June. Norwich 24 – Waltham 11 (5-2)
3 July. No game 
10 July. Fulham 15 – Norwich 26 (6-2)
17 July. Cambridge 0 – Norwich 9 (F)    (7-2)
24 July (DH). Cambridge 0 – Norwich 9 (F)    (8-2)
24 July (DH). Cambridge 3 – Norwich 45 (9-2)
31 July. Norwich 4 – Milton Keynes 13 (9-3)
7 August. Norwich 9 – Waltham 0 (F) (10-3)
14 August. Norwich 17 – Brighton 16 (11-3)
21 August. Burgess Hill 30 – Norwich 1    (11-4)
28 August. Norwich 9 – Guildford 0 (F)    (12-4)

North W L W% GB
Milton Keynes Truckers 9 4 0.692
Norwich Wanderers 9 4 0.692
Fulham Flames 5 8 0.385 4
Waltham Abbey Cardinals 4 9 0.308 5

 

South W L W% GB
Burgess Hill Red Hats 12 1 0.923
Brighton Buccaneers B 10 3 0.769 2
Gloster Meteors B 3 10 0.231 9
Guildford Mudcats 0 13 0 12

1995 – Wanderers off into the sunset

Norwich Wanderers were listed as being entrants in the BBF South – Division Two North league for 1995 in the March 1995 edition of Brit-Ball, showing that there finish in 1994 was enough to earn them promotion.

However the standings for the league in future editions do not include the Wanderers.

It would seem that they were unable to get a team together for that year, and so didn’t take to the field, and that is where the Wanderers’ story comes to an end.

Other notes

Back in November 2008, an article here on BaseballGB about Southern top-tier baseball prompted Herts Baseball’s Paul Auchterlounie to pass on some anecdotes and details from his time in Norwich in the comments section.

Paul joined the Wanderers in 1994 and confirmed that after that season “the departure of several key players (some of whom were US forces personnel)” resulted in the club folding, although he also noted that some social baseball / softball continued for a few years afterwards.

Paul’s comments are copied below:

“Matt – I was interested to read where you live.

I’m from Norwich originally and indeed that is where I first started playing baseball. Having picked up the game whilst in the States on a uni exchange program, I returned to Norwich and found out there was a team – Norwich Wanderers. I joined up and had a mediocre start to the game, competing in the then division 3 south (I think) within the BBF.

The club overall were successful, winning the division, but like so many teams followed success with the departure of several key players (some of whom were US forces personnel) and the club folded.

A few years of social baseball / softball with some of the old guys and some new guys followed, before I moved to Herts in 1999 and found that there was a team here too! Been involved ever since. Is there any likelihood of a team (other than UEA) being started again up in Norwich?”

…

The diamond was on a council field in the Heartsease estate – behind three tall tower blocks. I have no idea whether it’s still there or not (chances are probably not).

The social softball / baseball was mainly played in Eaton Park (big wide open spaces) but with no proper diamond or anything.

One thing I do remember about the diamond is this (it seemed quite funny at the time, but wasn’t when you look back on it): There was a car park around the back of one of the tower blocks. This would be so far into foul territory down the left field line as to be out of sight, and almost in line with where our HR line was.

One of our hitters stepped up to the plate. Big bloke – worked as a bouncer in the city. He absolutely crushed the ball but was way out in front of it and it just kept on carrying into foul territory – right into the car park and smashed the quarter light (I think it’s called) on the back on window of his mates car!! Incredible shot – probably never to be repeated!

…

Also – we had a quite incredible 3rd baseman. Nicknamed Hoover – cos he seemed to field absolutely everything that came his way. Worked on the farms, so was built like the proverbial brick out house and had a bullet of an arm (still don’t think I’ve seen one as good). I was playing 1st base in a training session, and he picked one up to fire over to 1st. I just put my glove out and prayed he’d hit it cos it was travelling about 8 inches above the ground at about 90 mph!!!!

 

The Heartsease diamond is long gone, although baseball and softball has continued to be played intermittently on Eaton Park over the years. Indeed, that’s where Norwich Iceni trained last year.

2017 and beyond

Norwich Iceni are now writing a new chapter in the baseball history of the city. The team will be based at Locksley School, just to the south of the city centre.

It’s possible there will be a home for the team on the university site in the future. Norwich Rugby Club are selling up their current land to housing developers and hope to move to a new sports facility at the UEA. The potential impact on wildlife on the site has prompted plenty of controversy locally and although planning permission was granted in November last year, this decision reportedly is now out for judicial review.

If the move does go ahead, the current plans include space for a baseball field, albeit one that will cut across football, cricket and training areas (see the site plan at the bottom of this Eastern Daily Press news article).

If you’re wondering where the Iceni name comes from, it was the name given to the Celtic tribe that settled in what is now Norfolk (plus parts of north-western Suffolk and eastern Cambridgeshire) in the Late Iron Age. It’s a common name for clubs and organisations in the county (and also a Wetherspoons pub!) and makes for a unique nickname in the British baseball leagues.

Norwich Iceni’s first BBF game takes place on Sunday (23rd) at home against Kent Mariners. Further info about the club can be found on their website, http://www.norwichbaseball.co.uk/, and related social media accounts.

Here’s hoping it’s the start of a successful new club in British baseball and one that will bring the sport to Norwich for years to come.

New British baseball history book: “What about the Villa?: Forgotten figures from Britain’s pro baseball league of 1890”

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watvDuring 2010, my posts on BaseballGB have been a little fewer and further between than I would have liked, but there has been a good reason. For the past 14 months, I have been researching and writing a 100,000-word history of Britain’s pro baseball league of 1890. The result was my first book.

The publisher received copies of the book on Friday (after a slight delay caused by the snow we’ve had), and it went on sale today. It is being sold directly by the publisher, Fineleaf Editions.

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The Gashouse Gang: Baseball’s Scrappiest Champions

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MlbHistoryThere has never been a team quite like the 1934 St. Louis Cardinals.

In the dredges of the Great Depression, a group of players who chewed tobacco, played covered in dirt (resembling gas station attendants, hence the nickname) and had their own bluegrass band squeaked out a dramatic pennant and won a seven game World Series.

Dizzy, Daffy, Ducky Wucky, Pepper, Lip and Flash were skilfully assembled by Branch Rickey, who used his nonpareil powers of talent evaluation and his innovative farm system to build the Cardinals to the top.

The men of the 1934 St. Louis Cardinals came from everywhere, traded for and bought by Rickey. Frankie Frisch, the Fordham Flash, was bought from the Giants and installed as second baseman and manager. The college man (Fordham was his alma mater) was immensely competitive, known for arguing vehemently against bad calls. Leo Durocher was a pool hustler from Massachusetts, a reprobate with a reputation for passing bad cheques and who would later be banned from baseball for a year for consorting with gamblers. The Lip, the Cards’ shortstop, was a vicious bench jockey.

Pepper Martin, ‘The Wild Horse of the Osage’, was the fastest man in baseball, so fast that folks claimed he ran down jackrabbits in his native Oklahoma to feed the family as a youngster. A prankster prone to dropping sneezing powder in hotel ventilation systems, he enjoyed driving his midget racing car around the warning track of Sportsman’s Park before games and led the Cardinal band, the Mississippi Mudcat Band. Joe Medwick was a taciturn man with a fierce temper, the product of his Hungarian parentage. But the muscular Medwick waddled when he walked, leading a generation of fans to call a Hall of Fame player ‘Ducky Wucky’.

Finally, there were the Dean boys. Paul Dean, a one-time sharecropper in Arkansas, was a quiet pitcher of considerable skill. He won 19 games as a rookie in 1934 and only the press’s need for a catchy nickname led him to being called Daffy. It was his brother who was the centre of attention.

Jerome Hanna Dean, or Dizzy as he was popularly known, was a 1930s pop culture icon. A man whose capacity to ravage the English language was matched only by his wit, he once stated, “I was blessed by the Lord – he gave me a strong arm, a good body, and a weak mind.” In 1934 he predicted that his brother and himself (he referred to them almost as one – ‘Me an’ Paul’) would win forty-five to fifty games. A second-grade dropout (‘I ain’t did so well in the first’) Dean had been discharged from the Army when he signed with a minor league team in Houston, and was only 22 when he was purchased by the Cardinals. A hard-throwing right hander with a good curveball and a master tactician on the mound, he had won 20 games in 1933 before making his big prediction.

The mastermind of the Cardinals was Rickey. A former catcher who had received a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Michigan, he had managed the Browns and then the Cardinals with sporadic success, but his baseball mind was regarded as one of the best and most thorough around. Rickey had built the Cardinals from virtually nothing – a derelict franchise in one of baseball’s smallest cities, they had lost on and off the field before Rickey’s arrival.

He instituted the farm system to circumvent minor league clubs who had sold off their best players to the more monied Giants and Cubs. Instead Rickey (with owner Sam Breadon’s money) would buy minor league clubs and develop talent themselves, teaching players Rickey’s philosophy on baseball from Class D to Class AA. Rickey had built the Cardinals into a respectable franchise by 1925, when Breadon relieved Rickey of managerial duties, arguing to Rickey that he was simply spreading himself too thin between trying to manage his nascent farm system and the big club at the same time.

The move paid off, as new manager (and Hall of Fame second baseman) Rogers Hornsby led the club to its first pennant in 38 years in 1926 and a dramatic World Series win over the New York Yankees. Another pennant followed in 1928, a further one in 1930 and a World Series win in 1931. Rickey, a master negotiator, didn’t pay his players terribly well, but he did instruct them in heads-up baseball. The Cardinals excited fans around the league with their rough and tumble style of play, getting their uniforms dirty fighting for every base, scratching out runs by any means possible but never giving up outs cheaply. These predominantly Southern boys, many without much education but with brains and grit to compensate, were taken to heart by the country. They were the little man clawing his way to success.

In 1934 the main competitor to the Cardinal pennant chase was the defending world champion New York Giants. Managed by Hall of Fame first baseman Bill Terry (if you haven’t noticed yet, player-managers were common in these days) they featured the magical screwball pitcher Carl Hubbell, called ‘The Meal Ticket’ for his clutch pitching. Their right fielder was the devastating power hitter Mel Ott, who stepped in the bucket for every one of his 511 home runs, a National League record at the time of his retirement. The Giants, still the favoured team among New Yorkers, were smug and satisfied. When a reporter asked what Terry thought of the archrival Brooklyn Dodgers, a shambolic sixth place team the year before, he sarcastically replied, “Is Brooklyn still in the league?”

With two weeks left in the season, the Giants were five and a half games ahead of the Cardinals. Even Dizzy was conceding defeat. But the Cardinals swept a double header at the Polo Grounds in front of 62,573, the largest crowd in National League history at that time. Dizzy beat 22-game winner Hal Schumacher 5-3 for his own 26th win and Paul/Daffy won his 17th, outdueling Carl Hubbell 3-1 in 11 innings. The lead was now 3.5 games and the Dean boys had already won forty-three games with two weeks to go.

To reduce travel costs during this time, teams tended to have exceptionally long home stands and away trips. Teams might not see home for three weeks or, likewise, the inside of a train car. Continuing their long trip, the Cardinals beat the Braves twice and then the Dodgers twice, with Dizzy bringing a no-hitter into the eight in game one while Paul no-hit the Dodgers in game two. “If I’d know Paul was going to pitch a no-hitter, I’d have pitched one too,” said Dizzy. Paul’s no hitter was the 45th win by a Dean in 1934. As Dizzy Dean said, “It ain’t braggin’ if you can do it,” and the Deans had done it. The Cardinals split a double header in Cincinnati before Bill Walker won 3-1 in Chicago on Monday. Dizzy won his 28th game on Tuesday over the Pirates, 3-2, and the Giant lead was now just a game.

Because of the scheduling, the Cardinals had games in hand when they returned to St. Louis. They would play six times before the end of the season while the Giants would only play three times, and so they controlled their own destiny. The Giants were sluggish – they would finish 8-13 over their final three weeks – and tired. “We just petered out in the last three weeks,” said Hal Schumacher. The Cardinals had won their second of four games versus the Reds and Dizzy his 29th, tying the Giants with two games left. Those two Giant games would be versus Brooklyn. Van Mungo won the first for Brooklyn while Paul won his 19th on Saturday. The Cardinals were now in first.

On Sunday, Dizzy was to come back on one day’s rest. The Giants tagged Brooklyn starter Ray Benge for four runs in the first, but Brooklyn fought back to tie the game at 5 going into the bottom of the eight inning. By this time the Giants were dead, as Dean and the Cardinals were en route to a 9-0 rout of Cincinnati. Dean would win his 30th game, the last National League pitcher to do so, and the Cardinals were National League champions, with an assist from a still-in-the-league Brooklyn Dodgers.

The Cardinals would play the Detroit Tigers in the 1934 World Series. The Tigers were a formidable team that year, led by Hall of Fame 1st baseman Hank Greenberg, Hall of Fame 2nd baseman Charlie Gehringer, Hall of Fame catcher Mickey Cochrane, Hall of Fame right fielder Goose Goslin and 24-game winner Schoolboy Rowe. The Tigers had won 101 games that year and were Series favourites. But they hadn’t seen the Deans. Dizzy, on two days rest, won Game 1. Rowe countered, helped by a Goose Goslin double, with a 3-2 Game 2 win to send the Series to St. Louis tied.

In Game 3, Paul Dean walked a tightrope: fourteen Tigers reached base, but only one scored. Jack Rothrock’s two run triple provided all the scoring Dean needed, and the Cardinals won 4-1. In game 4, submariner Eldon Auker clung on to a 4-2 when Dizzy Dean pinch ran for Spud Davis. Pepper Martin grounded into what seemed to be a 6-4-3 double play, but Dean leaped in mid-air and took out Billy Rogell’s throw to first…with his forehead. Dean was knocked senseless, carried from the field, and newspaper headlines across the country the next day told us what we knew all along: x-rays of Dean’s head showed nothing.

Since there was nothing to injure, ol’ Diz made his next start, but the Cardinals were bamboozled by Tommy Bridges’ curveball and lost 3-1. The Cardinals had lost two of their three games at Sportsman’s Park and would have to win both games at Detroit’s Navin Field in order to win the Series.

They would win Game 6 as Paul Dean won his second game of the Series, getting the game winning hit himself in the top of the 7th inning.

Forty thousand fans swarmed Navin Field for the last game of the Series. One of the most seesaw World Series ever, the uppity Cardinals were going to try and pull a rabbit out of their hat for the second time in ten days. Dizzy Dean would go against Eldon Auker. Dean would try and stop Greenberg, Gehringer, Cochrane and Goslin while Auker would try and stop Ducky Wucky Medwick, fast approaching the Series record for hits, Ripper Collins (the Cardinal first baseman who led the league with 35 home runs) and leadoff man Martin, who hit .355 in the Series. The first game 7 since 1931, it was one of the most highly anticipated baseball games in history.

In the top of the third with one out Dean doubled to left field. Pepper Martin bunted for a base hit, sending Dean to third, then promptly stole second. Jack Rothrock walked to load the bases before Frankie Frisch doubled to right field, scoring all of them. Schoolboy Rowe replaced Auker, got an out, then gave up a single and a double (scoring two) before being pulled for Chief Hogsett down 5-0. Hogsett loaded the bases before Dean hit a chopper to third, scoring Bill DeLancey. Pepper Martin then walked before Hogsett was dispatched for Tommy Bridges. The score was now 7-0 and all knew the Cardinals were to be World Champions.

In the sixth, Ducky Wucky Medwick had tripled in Martin for his 11th hit of the Series. But Medwick slid spikes up on third baseman Marv Owen and the ensuing melee incited the frustrated Detroit fans, who pelted Medwick with trash and food when he came out to field his position in the bottom of the sixth. Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis removed Medwick for his own safety, denying him a chance to tie or break the Series record for hits (12 at the time).

Meanwhile, Dean was cruising and goofing around with the Detroit hitters to the point that manager Frisch threatened to remove Dean from the game if he didn’t get serious. Dean called his bluff (“No you won’t” was his reply) and Frisch walked back to his position, smiling if beaten. The final score was 11-0 and the Gashouse Gang had moved to baseball’s penthouse.

Scrappiness and grit are often overrated traits in a baseball team, but the 1934 Cardinals were indefatigable. They were talented – no question about that – but their willingness to fight for each win made them Depression-era heroes, a perfect symbol of a country on its knees rising up to fight again.

Birth of a Nation

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MlbHistoryIn 1967, Boston was not a baseball town and who could blame them? The Red Sox hadn’t contended for a pennant since 1950, and hadn’t even had a winning season since 1958.

Just over ten thousand a game had come in 1966 to see the Red Sox lose 90 games. But in 1967 it all changed, with an Impossible Dream reinvigorating the Red Sox, interest in baseball in New England, and Fenway Park.

The Red Sox had been run like a country club for years. The rules of the time allowed owners to cut salaries after a bad season, but owner Tom Yawkey never cut anybody’s (Ted Williams had to beg Yawkey to cut his after a poor 1959). “They say there’s no sentiment in baseball, but I guess I have more than most,” Yawkey sheepishly said in a Sports Illustrated article. In many other ways, Yawkey had checked out, spending more time on his South Carolina estate at Fenway Park. Manager Billy Herman proclaimed to be a disciplinarian, but the Red Sox, to most people’s appearances (including the players), still seemed like the same old club. As second baseman Chuck Schilling said to Sports Illustrated, “They told me when I came here, that there were a lot of guys who didn’t care much whether they won or lost as long as they had fun.” Dick Stuart, whose predilection for errors and strikeouts was only matched by his home runs and his own television show in Boston, seemed the archetype. Stuart was handsome, funny, and talented. Nicknamed Dr. Strangeglove for his awful first basemanship, he once had a license plate that read “E3”.  His mantra was “I’m not paid to field, I’m paid to hit!” But Stuart wasn’t as good a hitter as he thought – he didn’t hit for a high average and he didn’t walk, plus he also grounded into a ton of double plays – and he didn’t give a shit. “He was the poorest excuse for a caring ballplayer I ever saw,” said Dick Williams. Stuart even once successfully argued to an umpire that he wasn’t hit by a pitch with the bases loaded so he could stay at the plate. He struck out.  Continue reading →

Published tomorrow: Fifty-nine in ’84 by Edward Achorn

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Anyone interested in nineteenth century baseball will be glad to learn of a new book that comes out tomorrow.  ‘Fifty-nine in ’84’ by Edward Achorn tells the tale of Hall of Fame pitcher Charles “Old Hoss” Radbourn.  Quite incredibly, Old Hoss won 59 games in 1884.  He started 73 games and completed them all, pitching more than 678 innings in the process, and he then went out and won all three games of what is considered to be baseball’s first World Series, although pre-1903 Fall Classics are now seen as ‘exhibitions’ in many record books. 

The book, published by HarperCollins, promises to reveal much about that incredible season as well as Radbourn’s career and the life of a ballplayer during the late nineteenth century.  It isn’t just Old Hoss’s pitching exploits that make him a compelling subject for a biography either:

“Radbourn was the first man to be photographed flipping the bird. He was prickly, hungry for money, and jealous of his reputation. A relative said he drank a quart of whiskey a day. But he may have been the most dogged competitor in baseball history. The book is also about his affair with a married woman who ran a dubious boarding house in downtown Providence, and was said to personally know every man in the National League. Radbourn died of syphilis at 43”.

Sounds like an interesting character, to say the least.  And what’s more, there’s a British link to the story as Old Hoss was the son of a butcher from England.  His father Charles Radbourn and mother Caroline lived in Bath, Somerset, and Old Hoss’s grandfather was the gardener at Prior Park overlooking the city. Charles and Caroline left after their first child was born, with the ball-playing Radbourn being the first of their children born in America.

For more details, check out Edward Achorn’s website: http://www.edwardachorn.com/

Book Review: Shades of Glory edited by Lawrence D. Hogan

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Shades of Glory edited by Lawrence D. Hogan (National Geographic, 2006), 424 pages

Much has been written about the seminal moment, and following seasons, when Jackie Robinson ‘broke the color line’ in 1947.  The story of baseball paving the way for greater integration in America is an immensely important one to know, but the preceding period of segregated baseball deserves equal attention.  While whites played in the Major Leagues, African Americans had to compete on their own teams in their own leagues: the Negro Leagues. 

The Negro Leagues are a complicated topic to come to terms with.  Their existence starkly revealed the ingrained racial prejudice that dominated America from the late 1800s on past the middle of the twentieth century; their ultimate obsolescence sounded a clarion call that equality and freedom should prevail.  Yet to depict the Negro Leagues as nothing more than a horrid aberration risks eliminating an important, often joyful and brilliant part of baseball and social history.  Shades of Glory provides a detailed and highly readable account of African-American baseball, recognising the inherent injustice of the Negro Leagues while also celebrating all that was good about them as well.  Continue reading →

Full article: Albert King – A 1930s speedway fan turned baseball follower

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Josh Chetwynd

Summary
This article tells the story of how a speedway fan named Albert King came to follow the West Ham Hammers in the London Major Baseball League of the 1930s. The article is based on correspondence that King had with Chetwynd in 2006, around the time that Chetwynd’s book British Baseball and the West Ham Club was being published by McFarland.

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