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Clipper's Player Remembrance Megathread Apr 19, 2024 17:11:06 GMT -5 kaybli likes this

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Post by fwclipper51 on Apr 19, 2024 17:11:06 GMT -5

Yankees Pitcher Harry Harper

This article was written by Bill Nowlin; Edited by Clipper

Harry Harper Yankees Player Photo

“Harry Harper Scored in Pitching, Politics” ran the New York World-Telegram headline announcing his death. Left-handed pitcher “Hackensack Harry” was a “gallery of legends, a great ruddy booming 1-man mythology,” read another story. He had won 57 games in the majors, built a junk business starting with 1 truck and became a millionaire, later serving for 16 years in statewide New Jersey posts, the last 6 as state labor commissioner.
Harper came from Hackensack, the city of his birth, and he came from modest circumstance.

He was born on April 24,1895, to Henry Clay Harper, a letter carrier in 1900 and Elizabeth (Van Saren) Harper. Both were Garden State natives, though Henry’s father had come to America from England. By 1910, Henry had become Assistant Postmaster and he and Lizzie had 3e sons: Walter (already a clerk in a paper mill), Harry, and Roger. According to Harper’s widow, Harry had attended school for 8 years, but apparently he did not go to high school.

Harper’s professional baseball career began in 1913. He was a protégé of Pitcher George Davis, who had gone with 18-year-old Harry to his home in order to secure his mother’s consent for him to join the Washington Senators. His 1st appearance was in the big leagues, for the Senators, working the last 3 innings in the 2nd game of a doubleheader on June 27, 1913, against the visiting Philadelphia Athletics. He gave up 1 run in the 11-5 loss. “Harper did so well yesterday,” wrote the Washington Post, “that Griffith was thoroughly tickled.” The paper observed that he “has much to learn about fielding his position” but was impressed that he had not been intimidated by “such a collection of vicious hitters as the Athletics.” Washington finished 2nd in the standings in 1913, 6½ games behind Philadelphia.

Washington Senators Player Photo

Harper was used sparingly, appearing in only 4 games for a total of 12? innings. He allowed 11 runs, though only 5 were earned (for a 3.55 ERA). Given that he himself committed 2 errors in seven chances, that statistic might be deceptive. He had a WHIP (walks plus hits per inning pitched) of 1.184 and a record of 0-0. After the season, manager Clark Griffith kept Harper and a few other players for a little more than a week, to work on baseball.

In January 1914, a story about Harper ran nationally. He returned his contract because it had omitted a clause on which his mother had insisted, excusing him from playing baseball on Sundays. Semipro ball on Sundays was apparently acceptable; Davis had first discovered Harper playing on a Sunday. The only other ballplayer with a clause excusing him from working on Sundays was Christy Mathewson. Harper did put on some weight and grew a little over the winter of 1913-1914 and was reportedly working on an “underhanded upshot.” He’s listed at 6-feet-2 and 165 pounds.

Harper had worked in 23 games for the 1914 Washington Senators, starting 3 of them. His pitching record was 2-1 as he worked 57 innings to an ERA of 3.47. His fielding remained a problem, with 3 errors in 14 chances. In fact, it was never that good; over the course of his 220 games in the majors, his fielding percentage was just .906. In 1914, Washington would dropped to 3rd place in the AL standings.

Even before the 1915 AL season began, Clark Griffith had let it be known that he rated him tops among left-handers and 2nd in baseball only to Walter Johnson. Of course Griffith was also displaying more than a little bias in favor of his own prospect. Harper had made 3 early appearances, but after May 7th, he was sent to the minor leagues for the 1st time, in order to get more experience. He had just turned 20 a couple of weeks before. Harper pitched for the Minneapolis Millers in the Double-A American Association. His 1st day with the Millers, he had struck out 16 Columbus batters, but he lost the game thanks in part to the 9 walks and 6 hits that he had allowed and an error. On May 19th, Harper threw a no-hitter against the St. Paul Saints, winning 4-0 with 12 K’s, but it was a far from perfect game, thanks to 7 walks and a balk. He had a problem locating his pitches and on July 5th he walked a record 20 batters – in an 8-inning game (which he lost to St. Paul, 13-5.) Eleven days later, Harper was recalled back to Washington.

He had worked in 21 games for Minneapolis, accumulating 154 innings, and though he had a good 2.81 ERA (his record was 7-9), he had ongoing problems with control, walking 127 and with a WHIP of 1.468. Nonetheless, he was brought back to Washington and got in another 86? big-league innings, producing a 4-4 record, with a 1.77 ERA. One of the secrets to his success was suggested by Umpire Billy Evans, who had officiated the 1st game in which Harper worked, in 1913: “Right off the reel, he proved that he had a world of stuff, but little or no idea as to the location of the plate. He was so wild that few of the batters took any chances on trying to hit the ball. They simply stood in a remote corner of the plate and waited for the umpire to call ball 4.”

Harper went on a postseason trip of all-stars and impressed Johnny Evers, who agreed with Griffith that “he must be classed with the best left-handers in either league.” He was given the nickname “South,” reflecting his status as a southpaw.

In fact, Harper put together a very strong season in 1916 (14-10, with a 2.45 ERA), while striking out 149 batters and walking 101 in 249? innings. For the rest of his MLB pitching career, however, his walks typically exceeded his strikeouts, and he even led the league with 13 wild pitches in the war-shortened 1918 season. Harper was pitching in the heart of the Deadball Era, but his ERA was a good one nonetheless – indeed, by the end of his MLB pitching career, it was a good 2.87.

Harper had some superb games and he had some clunkers. On August 3, 1917, against the St. Louis Browns, he would found the plate well enough, but 2 wild throws to 2nd base would cost the Senators the game, his heaves giving St. Louis 4 of their runs in a 5-4 game.

In October 1917, Harry Harper became engaged to Bessie Bartlett. He would sell off his waste-paper business; she had not approved of her husband running a junk business. Back in 1913, with his 1st paychecks from the Washington Senators, Harper had purchased a truck and then built it into a thriving enterprise. He did turn a profit on the sale. On February 26,1918, Harry and Bessie were wed. From June into July, he had a stretch, where he won 7 consecutive decisions, allowing only 11 runs over the 7 games. The stretch included the best game of his MLB pitching career- a 1-hitter on June 28th, the only hit was a 17th-inning solo HR by Boston’s Babe Ruth. By season’s end, however, he had the same 11 wins, that he had had in 1917, though this time with a 2.18 ERA. His 18-year-old brother enlisted in the Navy and an older brother was already in the Army, but Harper himself was able to continue to pitch baseball.

Washington Post sportswriter J.V. Fitz Gerald wrote in late March 1919, that Harper “has never looked better” and that he “appears to be a certainty to have the best year of his career.” Instead, he had the worst, losing 21 games-more than any other pitcher in the league. Walter Johnson was 20-14, but Harper was 6-21, with an ERA of 3.72. He had walked 97 batters and struck out only 87. Three of Harper’s 6 wins were against the Boston Red Sox. Harry lost 3 times to the Red Sox by scores of 2-0, 4-3 and 2-1. With a little run support, he could well have won at least 2 of those games. In the 49 innings, he worked against Boston, he had a 1.65 ERA. The Red Sox were impressed. Two days before the end of the year, they would trade for him. The Red Sox would send OF Braggo Roth and Red Shannon to Washington for Eddie Foster, Mike Menosky and Harper. Harper was the main target in the trade. The Boston Globe thought the Red Sox got the better part of the trade and that, in the 24-year-old Harper’s case, “It would appear that he has the best part of his baseball career ahead of him.” For his part, Harper was thinking of quitting and attending to his growing business in Hackensack. He was a holdout, he wanted a higher salary and he still refused to play on Sundays.

Boston Red Sox Player Photo

The 1920 Boston Red Sox, now without Babe Ruth in their starting rotation or batting line-up, would finished in 5th place in the AL. Harper’s 3.04 ERA was one of the best on the staff (the team ERA was 3.82), but his 5-14 record was similar to that of the year before. He had won his 1st 2 starts, then lost 10 straight decisions and in those 10 losses his teammates produced a total of 14 runs. It’s hard to win games if there’s little or no offense. One of those games was against the Senators and neither Harper nor Walter Johnson allowed a run through 6 innings. The Senators scored once in the top of the 7th, but Johnson no-hit the Red Sox for a 1-0 win. Only 1 man reached base, on an error that marred an otherwise perfect game.

After the season was over, there was another December trade and this time Harper was sent by the Red Sox to the New York Yankees. It was a big 8-player trade, with no cash involved: Harper, Pitcher Waite Hoyt, INF Mike McNally and Catcher Wally Schang all went to New York for 2B Del Pratt, Catcher Muddy Ruel, Pitcher Hank Thormahlen and Reserve OF Sammy Vick. The Boston Herald thought it was a bit of a lopsided trade in favor of Boston, which “almost makes one think that [Boston’s Harry] Frazee is getting a conscience payment from the Yankee owners on Babe Ruth.”

The Yankees didn’t use Harry Harper until May 13th, when he started against the Detroit Tigers. He would collect a win, working 5? innings, giving up just 2 runs, but had to leave the game at that point when Eddie Ainsmith’s batted ball struck him in the pitching hand, fracturing his left thumb. Harper did throw Ainsmith out, but he could not continue to pitch. Expected to be out for 10 days, he didn’t pitch again until August 25th. He got in 6 starts in September, finishing the season 4-3 record with a 3.76 ERA. The Yankees had made do without a single left-hander in the rotation for most of the season, but they won the pennant, the 1st in team history, 4½ games ahead of 2nd-place Cleveland. Another former Red Sox pitcher, Carl Mays, was 27-9 for the season. His work and Babe Ruth’s 59 HRs and 168 RBIs may have made almost all the difference.

It was an all-New York best-of-9 World Series, with the New York Giants victorious over the Yankees, 5 games to 3. Harper saw duty in just 1 game, given the start in Game 6. He held the Giants scoreless in the 1st and saw the Yankees score 3 runs, but then he gave up a walk, a HR and another HR. (Both were “Polo Grounds HRs” just barely fair to the foul poles, each of which was well under 300 feet from the plate.) That evened things up and Yankees Manager Miller Huggins brought in veteran hurler Bob Shawkey to try to shut the door. The Giants won in the end, 8-5, the loss on Shawkey’s shoulders

In February 1922, Harper asked the Yankees for an indefinite leave. He and his brother had the trucking business and had received some advantageous contracts to help construct what became named the Holland Tunnel, connecting New Jersey to Manhattan Island and to haul pipe for a water main to be laid from the Catskills to New York City. At the end of March, Harper applied for reinstatement and his request was granted by MLB Commissioner Kenesaw M. Landis. He was unable to pitch, though, due to an injury to his pitching hand and the Yankees gave him his unconditional release on June 1st. He did pitch some semipro ball in New Jersey, and in September, he was signed for 1923 NL season by the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Harry Harper appeared in only 1 game for Brooklyn Dodgers and lost it. On May 8th, he had started against the visiting Pittsburgh Pirates and gave up 8 hits and 3 walks for 6 runs in 3? innings. Harper bore the loss; it was his last game in the majors. He was released by the Dodgers on May 12th.
There was money to be made in independent baseball, some teams even outdrew major-league teams. For 1924, Harper signed with the Doherty Silk Sox of Paterson, New Jersey. And he was quite a star in independent league circles. After leaving Brooklyn in May 1923, he pitched the rest of that season and lost only 2 games all year, allowing an average of 2 hits a game and striking out between 15 and 22 batters in every game. The Silk Sox would beat the Yankees, 6-5, in an exhibition game in Clifton on May 4th and it was Harper who held Babe Ruth hitless and ultimately won the game with a 2-out, 9th-inning HR.

Harper decided to try a comeback in 1925, hoping to work for the New York Giants. It didn’t work out. He would continued to pitch semipro ball – typically on Sundays – for the Oritani club in Hackensack.

Harper would focused on his considerable business enterprises. Though he would never come out and say that he had become a millionaire, he did reportedly tell 1 writer in 1941, “You can say that I wouldn’t sell my business interest for $1,000,000.” He had become the largest taxpayer in the city of Hackensack. In addition to the trucking company, he had established a contracting firm, a supermarket, a fuel company and a beverage company.

Harper also went into politics, running as a Republican and becoming Sheriff of Bergen County in 1927. A run for the state senate resulted in defeat, but he served as State Civil Service Commissioner from 1934 to 1944 and New Jersey State Labor Commissioner from 1944 to 1950. A nomination to run for Congress in a special election in January 1950, resulted in a surprise defeat by William Widnall.

Harry Harper died the day before he would have turned 68, on April 23,1963, at St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York City. The cause of death was a heart attack. He also suffered from cirrhosis. Harper left his widow, Bessie; their son, State Senator George B. Harper and a daughter, Elizabeth Burchell.

Last Edit: Apr 19, 2024 17:15:31 GMT -5 by fwclipper51

fwclipper51
Ruthian Legend

Posts: 1,108

Clipper's Player Remembrance Megathread Apr 20, 2024 12:23:34 GMT -5 kaybli likes this

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Post by fwclipper51 on Apr 20, 2024 12:23:34 GMT -5

Yankees Pitcher Ray Fisher

This article was written by Chip Hart; Edited by Clipper
[With research assistance from John Leidy]

Ray Fisher has been justly honored for his 38 seasons as head baseball coach at the University of Michigan. He was elected to Michigan’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1959, the American Association of College Baseball Coaches Hall of Fame in 1966, and the University of Michigan Hall of Honor in 1979. And on May 23, 1970, he received his greatest honor when the ballpark at the University of Michigan was renamed Ray Fisher Baseball Stadium.

Ray Fisher and Branch Rickey
Yet although his name is almost as revered in Ann Arbor as “Hail To The Victors,” Michigan’s famous fight song, Ray Fisher is nearly forgotten in his native Vermont. Even though Fisher spent each summer in a camp on Lake Champlain, few Vermonters remember the fine MLB pitcher ,who had compiled a 2.82 ERA and won 100 games over 10 seasons prior to his unjust banishment by Commissioner Judge Landis in 1921.

Ray Lyle Fisher was born on a farm in Middlebury, Vermont, on October 4,1887. His 2 oldest brothers worked their entire lives as farmers, and Ray appeared to be destined for a similar fate. “My parents only let me play sports if I kept up my share of the farm work,” he recalled.

Ray was a star pitcher for Middlebury High School and following his graduation in 1906, he received an offer to play semi-pro baseball in Valleyfield, Quebec. Ray’s father expected him to work on the family farm, however, so Ray was allowed to play only on condition that he send enough money home to hire a farmhand. He did so and had plenty to spare, earning his room and board and $10 per week for pitching and an additional $1.35 per day as a machinist’s assistant at the Dominion Textile Factory.

That fall, Ray joined his older brother Harry as a student at Middlebury College. The youngest Fisher excelled in collegiate athletics, setting the school shot-put record and playing varsity football and baseball. “Pick” (short for “Pickerel”), as he was called by schoolmates, was an infielder at Middlebury until Cy Stackpole, an old minor leaguer who coached the varsity, turned him into a pitcher. Fisher remembered that day:

“Go out on the mound and throw me a few,” Cy said one day in practice. So, I went out, tried a curve or two when Stackpole, standing in the box with a bat, told me to. Then I up and threw a fastball. It zipped pretty good. Stackpole just stood there looking at me for a long time with a half-smile on his lips. Finally, he said, “How’d you like to pitch against Colgate tomorrow?” I said fine. Colgate, of course, was a major baseball power and was expecting to mop us up. But I had quite a day, fanned 18 and shut them out.

Before long scouts took notice of the 5’11”, 195 lb. right-hander. The summer between his sophomore and junior years at Middlebury Fisher signed with Hartford of the Class-B Connecticut State League. In his 1st partial season as a professional, he went 12-1 as a starter and reliever and his .923 winning percentage stood as a minor-league record for over half a century.

In 1909, Ray would returned to the Connecticut capital and registered one of the greatest minor-league pitching performances ever, going 24-5 with 243 strikeouts to lead Hartford to its 1st-ever pennant. By that point MLB teams were interested in his services. Ray would sign a $1,500 contract with the New York Highlanders (later known as the Yankees) on condition that he be allowed to return to the Middlebury campus for his senior year. He signed with New York thinking he would not receive other offers, but shortly thereafter Ray Collins told him that the Boston Red Sox also wanted to sign him. After graduating from Middlebury in 1910, 22-year-old Ray Fisher reported to New York carrying, to the amusement of his new teammates, a homemade bat he had whittled himself back at his Vermont farm. Despite his naivety, Fisher was unimpressed by his new surroundings. “They called it Hilltop Park,” he said, “and it wasn’t even a good college field. The foul lines were cockeyed and the outfield sloped downhill, so when the batter hit
one out there it actually rolled toward the fences."

Yankees Pitcher Ray Fisher

New York Manager George Stallings gave his new pitcher a start against the Chicago White Sox on July 2nd. Years later Fisher remembered 1 game during that 1st season: My opponent was Ed Walsh, a great pitcher, and Stallings figured he was going to lose the game and didn’t want to waste one of his regular pitchers so he put me in. To be sure I wouldn’t hurt any of his regular catchers- I was a bit wild, no doubt- he brought out Lou Criger, who was the famous batterymate of Cy Young. I think my 1st game in the MLB was his last. Ray went on to trim the White Sox by a score of 2 to 1, and Stallings told him later that he never would’ve started him, if he’d thought the Highlanders had a chance to beat Walsh that day.

Later in the 1910 season, Stallings was replaced as Manager by 1st baseman Hal Chase, one of the most unsavory characters in the history of the game. Fisher remembered Chase as a “wonderful fielder, wonderful ballplayer,” but he also thought the manager was a kleptomaniac. “If we were playing poker, he’d play,” Fisher said. “But if he weren’t playing, he’d sit right down next to you and see what you needed and he’d try to hand you the cards so you would cheat. Good fella, but just wanted to do things that weren’t right.”

Surprisingly, Fisher initially thought more highly of Chase than of Hall-of-Fame Manager Frank Chance, who led the Yankees in 1913 and 1914. “He didn’t know any of us,” Fisher said, “but he had that book [containing statistics from previous seasons]. When you were working, he sized you up and then he would look in the book and see what you did and then he would decide the reason. He was a devil.”

Relations between Fisher and Chance were strained until an incident during the 1913 season. “At that time, I was ready to fight back a little bit,” Fisher remembered.
One day, I was pitching and they hit a ball back to me with a man on 1st and I hesitated on my play. I wasn’t sure if Peck or Hartzel was covering so I only got 1 man. They would have gotten me out of the inning.
[Chance] hollered something at me and I hollered something back. Then I saw him making room for me on the bench. And I’m telling you we had it out. People in the boxes were leaning all over and listening. In the meantime, the inning was going. He was so intent on me, he forgot to have any pitcher warmed up to take my place. When the inning was over, he didn’t have any pitcher warmed up. He said, “Do you want to pitch?” And I said, “I don’t give a damn if I ever pitch another game.” He said, “Go out there and pitch.”The argument actually improved Ray’s standing with his fiery manager:

[Chance’s] 2nd year I reported [for spring training] in Houston and there was a boy who went to school with me in Middlebury, who lived outside of Houston. They invited me out and I didn’t know whether I would be home in time [for curfew]. I said to him, “I’m going to so-and-so’s and I expect to be back in time, but I want you to know where I’ll be.” And he said, “No rules for you this year,” and that was it. He decided I was an alright guy. Never said boo to me. If I didn’t come to the ballpark the day after I pitched, no questions asked. Never a better manager than Frank Chance, once we got to know each other.
Fisher responded to the freedom with his best season to that point- 10-12 and a 2.28 ERA in 209 innings for the 6th-place Yankees in 1914. The next year, after Chance was forced into retirement by ill health, Ray pitched even better, going 18-11 with a 2.11 ERA (5th-best in the A.L.).

Until then Fisher had spent his off-seasons in Vermont, serving as Athletic Director at Middlebury College. He had also taught Latin, and for that reason sportswriters had dubbed him “The Vermont Schoolmaster.” During the 1912 off-season he had married Alice Seeley, another Middlebury native and they remained happily married until Alice passed away in 1976. But by 1915, Ray was so popular in New York City that the President of Middlebury College thought he could do more for the school by spending his winters in Gotham. The loyal alumnus agreed; and one might speculate that but for the president’s “wisdom,” Ray Fisher might have spent the next half-century at Middlebury rather than Michigan.

Ray Fisher would pitched for the Yankees through the 1917 season, when he came down with pleurisy, a disease related to tuberculosis. He suffered with pain, shortness of breath and a weakened overall condition that finally caused him to miss more than 1 month of the season. His opponent on the day he returned was Walter Johnson, perhaps the greatest pitcher of all-time.

“He threw a fastball by me and, I’ll tell ya, it looked to me like he just opened his hand and it went by me,” Fisher said. “Then he threw me a curveball and that was just right for me. And I got to 1st and the 2nd baseman said, ‘What did he do, throw you a curveball?’”
What Fisher omitted in telling that story is that he threw a shutout that day to beat Johnson, 2 to 0.
Ty Cobb is known primarily for the anger and violence with which he played the game of baseball, but Ray Fisher saw a sweeter side of the Georgia Peach: Although they say a lot of things about him, I remember distinctly in Detroit that he swung at a ball towards 1st base and I had to go cover. The ball was real slow along the foul line and I was trying to get the bag and catch the ball at the same time. I ended up with my leg across the bag. He could have stepped on it, and had the perfect right to, but he jumped the bag! If his reputation were true, he would have stepped on it and cut my leg.

Cobb (as did Napoleon Lajoie) listed Fisher among the toughest pitchers he ever faced, and Ray remembered 1 particular relief appearance in New York when he tamed the Tigers:

It was the 8th inning and [Ray] Caldwell got hit with a liner and split his hand. They put me in there and [Detroit] had the top of the order up. I fooled around and gave a base on balls to Donie Bush, and then Vitt pushed him over. I had Cobb and Crawford coming up.

I could pitch [to Cobb] if I had my stuff, ’cause he stood right on the plate. I got 2 strikes on him- you couldn’t have shot them in any better. I had slippery elm in my mouth and when I saw that second one go by, I put that spit on there and he never knew it. No one ever told him. He swung for a fast one and missed. I could have lost the game then and people still would have been for me! I will always remember that as a highlight because they had the tying run on 2nd base and I got [Cobb] with 3 pitches.
[Then] Crawford grounded out to short. I remember I came up to bat — the umpires in those days were really good fellas. I remember as I came to bat — you wouldn’t hear it now — that ump said to me, “Ray, you’ve got pretty good stuff out there today.” They wouldn’t say that now, or even think of it.

Ray Fisher would miss the entire 1918 season, when he was drafted into the US Army. At the time, he felt his military service was a colossal waste of time, but years later he reflected that perhaps it saved his baseball career. Rather than spending April through October traveling the country in smoke-filled trains, eating poorly and getting little rest, Fisher would regained his health under the watchful eye of army physicians at Fort Slocum outside New Rochelle, New York. Ray used his managerial skills to run the camp’s athletics program.

Ray Fisher Reds Player Photo
While he was in the service Fisher was acquired by the N.L.’s Cincinnati Reds, who lowered his salary from $6,500 to $3,500. To make things worse, switching leagues meant that he had to learn how to pitch to a whole new set of batters, including Hall-of-Famer Rogers Hornsby: In the 1st game, I pitched in the National League against St. Louis, I bumped into Hornsby. I looked at him and decided to keep it away from him. [My pitch] was up pretty near waist-high. If it had been a little lower, I don’t know that he would have hit it the same, but he hit that thing over Greasy Neale’s head and it went to the fence.

But Cliff Heathcote was on 1st. He could run, but he wasn’t very sharp baseball-wise. Heathcote went past the shortstop and about when he got there, something hit him and he decided the ball had been caught and he turned around. Hornsby was about 2-thirds of the way to 2nd base and he stood there holding his hat, cussing the guy. We got the ball and got a force out.

The Reds caught a lot of breaks in 1919, and in his return to professional baseball Fisher was 14-5 with a 2.17 ERA as the Reds won their 1st-ever N.L. pennant. Cincinnati had a strong team built around Heinie Groh and Hall-of-Famer Edd Roush, but their World Series victory over the Chicago White Sox will be forever tainted by the Black Sox scandal. Fisher, in fact, was the losing pitcher in the famous Game 3 when “Honest” Dickey Kerr beat the Reds on a 3-hit shutout.
“No, we didn’t know some of the White Sox players had agreed to throw the Series,” Fisher said, “but I am sure some of our men knew there was something wrong as the Series progressed.” The most famous of the conspirators was Shoeless Joe Jackson.
Fisher said of Jackson:
He wasn’t educated and the guys used to pull tricks on him, especially his own guys. He couldn’t read or write and they used to read his wife’s letters for him and, of course, they made stuff up.
The 2 men had developed a friendship, visiting before ball games, and Ray always believed that Joe was just too simple and naïve a man to get involved in something as complicated as throwing a World Series.

Prior to the 1920 NL season, the National Commission decided to ban the spitball. Fortunately for Ray, the leagues allowed pitchers, who already used it to continue for the rest of their careers and he was one of 17 who were exempted from the new rule. Ray would return to the Reds, embittered that the team did not raise his $3,500 salary despite his fine performance in 1919. Still, he had pitched well (2.73 ERA), though the Reds faltered and his won-lost record sank to a 10-11 mark.

By 1921 Fisher’s daughter, Janet, was nearing 2 years old. Ray was beginning to grow tired of the nomadic life of a baseball player. He decided it might be time to settle into a “real” job. What happened in the spring of 1921, however, is not entirely clear, even to the individuals involved. What is clear is that Fisher left the Cincinnati club that spring and never again played in the major leagues.

While returning from spring training in Texas in March 1921, Ray Fisher learned that 2B Del Pratt, formerly of the Browns and the Yankees, had declined the position as Baseball Coach at the University of Michigan to return to the major leagues. The previous year, St. Louis Cardinals General Manager Branch Rickey, an influential alumnus of Michigan Law School, had recommended Ray Fisher for the position.
Ray spoke to Reds Manager Pat Moran about interviewing for the Michigan job. Cincinnati management was aware that the Vermonter was unhappy with his players salary and did nothing to prevent him from leaving the club. After pitching the last 5 innings and driving in the winning run in the Reds’ final exhibition game in Indianapolis, Ray drove to Ann Arbor to interview. The press reported that Fisher had been given his release with the expectation that he would accept the coaching position at Michigan.

Michigan offered the job to Ray, but around the same time 2 of Cincinnati’s better pitchers were not performing well. Moran suddenly became interested in keeping Fisher; newspapers quoted him as saying, “Ray is pitching better than he ever has.” But Reds Team Owner August Herrman refused to offer Ray a multi-year contract and Fisher turned down a 1-year player contract with a $1,000 raise. With the parties at an impasse, Ray picked up the phone on Herrman’s desk and called Michigan to say that he’d take the coaching position.

In late April 1921, Herrmann dashed off a letter to N.L. President John Heydler expressing his dismay that Fisher had quit the Reds despite a salary increase. More importantly, the owner noted that his recalcitrant pitcher had given only 7-days’ notice of his intention to quit — not the proper 10 days’ notice as required by his contract. Heydler would placed Fisher on the Ineligible List.

Ray was shocked when he heard the news. When his Michigan team was in Chicago, he sought out Commissioner Judge Landis for a face-to-face meeting to learn his true status. Landis would contacted Cincinnati Manager Pat Moran for a full report of the dealings between the Reds and Ray Fisher. Had Moran permitted Fisher to interview for the Michigan position?

Moran responded, “I positively refused to grant [such permission] and told him to take up the matter over long-distance telephone with President Herrmann, which I understand he did not do, but took it upon himself to leave the next day.” For 30 years, Fisher would remained ignorant of Moran’s response, which he vehemently contested.

In June 1921, Commissioner Judge Landis sent Fisher a telegram informing him that he had joined baseball’s Permanent Ineligible List. He would remained on that list for nearly 60 years.

At the University of Michigan, Ray Fisher became the dean of college baseball coaches. In nearly 1,000 regular season games, 1921 to 1958, Fisher’s teams went 661-292 (.694), won 14 Big Ten titles and an NCAA championship in 1953, the year he was voted NCAA Coach of the Year. Nearly 20 of his players went on to the major leagues, including Dick Wakefield and Don Lund. Fisher was Michigan’s winningest coach in any sport for 70 years,1930-2000, until Softball Coach Carol Hutchins got her 662nd win. (As of 2006, Hutchins’s record stood at 961-360-4 for a .727 winning percentage.

Like the major leagues, collegiate athletics had returned to segregation around the turn of the century, but Fisher integrated his Michigan team long before it became normal practice. He also played a role in popularizing baseball in Japan by taking teams to Tokyo in 1929 and 1932 to play exhibition games against Meiji University.

Returning to his family’s camp on Lake Champlain during summers, Ray became one of the driving forces behind semi-pro baseball in Vermont. Occasionally he pitched for the team from Long Point, where his camp was located, or for Vergennes, as on this occasion described in the September 10, 1934, edition of the Burlington Free Press:

Ray Fisher, a 47-year-old veteran of the majors, pitched himself into the local baseball hall of fame here this afternoon with a no-hit, no-run victory over the Queen City Blues team of Burlington…. [H]e leaves tonight to resume his coaching duties at the University of Michigan…. Today’s game was played in the remarkably short time of 55 minutes, so easily did Fisher dispose of the opposing batsmen.
But he is best-remembered as the fiery manager of the Twin City Trojans of Vermont’s famous Northern League. Ray Fisher stood up for the rights of college baseball players to further their skills and earn extra money by playing in summer leagues, especially in light of the numerous scholarships available to football and basketball players and the flexibility of the amateur status of track teams. Baseball players, he felt, were treated unfairly. To his frustration, the Big 9 had strict rules on player eligibility, and much of Ray’s final years in collegiate coaching were spent fighting with the NCAA.

With his national reputation, Fisher had little difficulty attracting top players to the Northern League, but the best player he ever coached was undoubtedly Robin Roberts. Though the future Hall-of-Famer pitched for rival Michigan State, Ray somehow convinced him to play for the Twin City Trojans in 1946 and 1947. Roberts has fond memories of his time in the Green Mountains, particularly the second season: “[W]e were really good then. I won 17 straight starts that year in Vermont, and that was the year the scouts became interested. I signed with the Phillies in September of that year and was in the big leagues the next June.”

To the chagrin of his coaches at Michigan State and Philadelphia, Robin Roberts consistently credited Ray Fisher for his success: “Ray taught me everything,” he said. “Everything I’ve been told by the Phillies coaches is just a repetition of what I learned in Vermont. Of course, it’s nice to be reminded, and don’t think I don’t appreciate the help I’ve received from fellows like [George] Earnshaw and [Schoolboy] Rowe. It is just that I feel I owe so much to Fisher.”

With players like Roberts, Fisher’s Montpelier-based Twin City Trojans were always the team to beat, and his rambunctious coaching style brought out the fans. While he was tough on umpires at Michigan, his school-year persona didn’t compare to the summer character known as “Angry Ray” (or “Rowdy Ray,” “Violent Fisher” or “Cry Baby Ray,” to mention a few of the nicknames he received from the Vermont press).

Ray was consistently tossed out of games and frequently required the assistance of police officers-not only to get him to leave the ballpark, but to protect him from rowdy fans once he got outside. Though sometimes his tirades were marked by equipment-tossing and protested games, Ray generally limited his actions to pointed verbal abuse-but never any expletives.

One story is recounted by R.W. Manville, a former Northern League player, in a letter written in May 1970:
One night, after a particularly harrowing series of umpires’ bad decisions, Ray managed (with a few “Lord-a-mighties!” thrown in) to get himself excused from the game in the 5th or 6th inning. In his easily recognizable yankee-spiced voice, he soon had everyone in the stands in arms over his comments wafting gently from somewhere behind the clubhouse. This ultimately led to disaster, and my final remembrance of that evening is Mother Fisher standing by her car, all 4 tires having been deflated by the crowd, asking the team to go rescue Ray from the clubhouse. As we surrounded him, bats in hand, on leaving the park, Ray couldn’t resist 1 more fling at the hostile crowd: “This is a 5-cent town, 3-cent team and a penny’s worth of umpire!”

Much of that behavior was an act, as demonstrated in this excerpt from the Burlington Free Press:

[Ray] went striding out to the plate umpire at Centennial Field one day after a close play, his hands shoved into his pockets like Casey Stengel. He waved his arguing player into the dugout.
Then, with outthrust jaw, he harangued the umpire. Once in a while he waved an arm while the crowd hooted and yelled. He whirled and went back to the dugout, the umpire glaring at him. After the game, we asked the umpire what Ray had said and got this answer:

“In a quiet voice, despite his arm swinging, Ray said, ‘I want you fellows to come down to my camp and we’ll have a cookout. We can get some fishing in there.’ Then he turned and walked away.”

A huge uproar followed Fisher’s resignation as coach of the Twin City Trojans in the middle of the 1949 season. At the time Ray was feeling the pressure of coaching year-round, and at age 62 he was enjoying more and more the time he spent on Lake Champlain. Fisher and the local media, however, focused on an ongoing problem Ray was having with a particular umpire. The umpire had ejected Fisher from 3 contests, even though the rules of baseball were on Ray’s side on at least 2 of those occasions. Finally, after his appeal to the league commissioner failed, Ray decided to call it quits in midseason, citing a conspiracy against him. A more subtle reading of his actions indicates that he was ready to retire at the end of the season and preferred to go out in controversy.

Fisher never returned to managing in the Northern League, though he did spend a few summers coaching a semi-pro team in Blacks Harbor, New Brunswick, Canada.

Ray Fisher would coach at Michigan until 1958, when his age forced him into mandatory retirement. While he continued to provide guidance in an unofficial manner, that year marked the beginning of his slow departure from the game he loved. Ray spent much of his retirement fishing and relaxing at his camp on Lake Champlain. There were still plenty of chores, and a Saturday morning was as likely to find Ray on his roof repairing shingles as baiting another hook.
Two events transpired in Ray Fisher’s later years that brought closure to his life in baseball. Back in the 1930’s, he had received a Lifetime Pass from the major leagues, which he interpreted to mean that his banishment from Organized Baseball had been lifted. He probably never thought twice when he worked as a spring training instructor for the Detroit Tigers and Milwaukee Braves during the early 1960’s.

In truth, however, he remained on baseball’s blacklist, a fact that became apparent to Fisher, when University of Michigan History Professor Don Proctor wrote a wonderfully complete and compelling analysis of his banishment. But when numerous letters were written on Ray’s behalf to the Baseball Commissioner’s Office (including one from President Gerald Ford, who had played freshman football under Ray at the University of Michigan), Bowie Kuhn responded that baseball considered Fisher a “retired player in good standing.”

Then in the summer of 1982, just short of his 95th birthday, Ray had attended an Old Timers Game at Yankee Stadium even though by that point, he was confined to a wheelchair. Ray’s grandson, John Leidy, remembered the occasion:

When we got there the 1st evening, there was a reception and I was taken aback by the sheer number of the old-time players who were there. Many Hall-of-Famers: Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Whitey Ford, Lefty Gomez. As a bystander, I was a little disappointed that almost none of the others went out of their way to speak to my grandfather. Of course, to be fair, almost none of them knew him. None of them had played with him. Next to my grandfather, the oldest player there was Joe Sewell and I believe he went back to the 1920’s. Grandpa was the only person there who had played in the teens.

I may be reading into this, but I also felt that those guys had a hard time relating to someone who was as old and as crippled as he was. I felt that these athletes were proud of their physical conditions and maybe it was difficult to accept the fact that they would age themselves.

Lefty Gomez came across the room right away and Joe Sewell spoke to him, too. But I will be forever in debt to, and appreciative of, Joe DiMaggio. He was the only person who had not previously known my grandfather, who came over and paid his respects.

When we first arrived at Yankee Stadium and stepped out of the limousine, all these youngsters came up wanting autographs. We were in the dugout and they introduced the players 1 at a time, out on the line, all suited up. Of course, my grandfather couldn’t play, but they introduced him as the oldest living Yankee and they wheeled him out onto the field. He waved to the crowd and they had a long, loud standing ovation, 2nd only to DiMaggio. Grandpa began to break down as the crowd was cheering. I saw the look on his face as he began to get teary as the cheering increased.

We had a dinner Saturday after the game and my grandfather was seated at the head of our table. When the dinner was over, Joe DiMaggio got up to leave a bit ahead of everyone else. He walked to the head of our table and paid his respects to my grandfather before leaving.

A couple months later, when grandpa was ill, he said to me, “At least we made it to Yankee Stadium.”

Ray Fisher would pass away in Ann Arbor on November 3, 1982, some 3 months after his trip to New York. In 2003, at the request of SABR, the state of Vermont erected a historic site marker near his birthplace in Middlebury.

Last Edit: Apr 20, 2024 17:33:22 GMT -5 by fwclipper51

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Post by fwclipper51 on Apr 20, 2024 19:57:05 GMT -5

Yankees Starter Ray “Slim” Caldwell
1910-1918
Written by Steve Steinberg, Edited by Clipper

“Caldwell could be as great as Matty or Walter Johnson,

but instead of choosing their careers, he is evidently going

to be another Rube Waddell.”

— Grantland Rice, 1914

“Caldwell might have been the Mathewson of the Yankees,

but he turned out to be the Bugs Raymond of the local

Americans. iiregular habits destroyed his effectiveness.”

— Fred Lieb, The Sun (New York), December 19,1918

Ray Caldwell was a pitcher of immense talent who had an enormous appetite for nightlife and a weakness for alcohol. For his obituary The Sporting News wrote, “his escapades were legendary” (September 2,1967). Over the course of 2 decades, from 1910 to 1933, he won nearly 300 games, 133 of them in the majors. As the ace of the New York Americans in the early ‘teens, he was at times so dominant that Washington once offered Walter Johnson for him in a trade. Ray’s flashes of brilliance were usually followed by “outbreaks of misbehavior,” followed by repentance, recovery, and pitching excellence, before the cycle began anew.

Ray Caldwell was born on April 16, 1888, in northwestern Pennsylvania, in the town of Corydon. (The town no longer exists; In 1965, it was put under water by the Kinzua Dam and the Allegheny Reservoir.) There’s only 1 mention of his father, that he was a minister overseas. Ray’s stepfather, Lewis Archer, was a telegrapher, and Ray followed in his footsteps in “the brass-pounding profession.” Before, during, and after his baseball career, he worked a telegrapher for the B, R, & P (Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh) Railway.

Ray "Slim" Caldwell Yankees Photo

Ray was a latecomer to baseball, starting in 1908 and then signing a contract for the Butler semi-pro club of Bath in 1909, at the age of 21. When he had pitched well against an all-star team from the Pennsylvania League, Duke Servatius signed him for the McKeesport team of that league.

1910 was Ray’s 1st professional season. The success of an 18-win campaign with McKeesport led to his acquisition by the New York Americans and their MLB Scout Arthur Irwin for $1,500. He would join the Highlanders that September, a tumultuous time for the New York team. Two weeks after Ray arrived, 1st baseman Hal Chase took over for George Stallings as skipper. Chase gave Ray his 1st start on September 21st, a 6-4 loss to the White Sox. Ray always remembered his 2nd outing, a win over the Red Sox, when Harry Hooper his very 1st offering for a HR.

In his 1st full season in the bigs, 1911, Ray became the Highlanders’ No. 2 starter, behind phenom Russ Ford, with 14 wins with a 3.35 ERA. Twice in early May he faced another young pitcher and both times Joe Wood would shut out the New Yorkers. Ray had what would be a career-high 145 strikeouts that year and capped off his rookie season with a shutout over Washington on September 1st. He served notice that he was skilled with the bat too. He was hitting .373 when The Sporting News featured his hitting on July 6th; a few days later, he would 3-hit the Browns and got 3 hits himself. He would finished with a .272 batting average and 17 RBIs.

The slender hurler threw with his right arm, yet hit left-handed. With a lanky 6′ 2″, 190-pound frame and an elongated face, he quickly earned the nickname “Slim.” Baseball historian Fred Lieb once wrote that Ray had an easy, effortless delivery and a temperament to go with it. He had a disarming smile that the ladies found attractive. He also had a good fastball, sharp-breaking curve, and even an “underhand ball” which led the Detroit News to see him as “the 2nd Matty” as early as May 6,1911.

Ray was hampered by an arm injury for the next 2 years. He had started slowly in 1912. On June 7th in Cleveland, he finally had a strong outing, carrying a shutout into the 5th inning, when something popped in his shoulder. “Twisted muscles” was the way The World described it. He hardly pitched for about a month. In early July Manager Harry Wolverton (who followed Hal Chase’s unsuccessful tenure), fined Ray $250 and suspended him indefinitely for not reporting in Boston. Caldwell then sparkled in a July 20th double-header, when he stole home for the margin of victory in the 1st game and twirled a shutout in the 2nd contest. While he threw a couple of shutouts, after he came back from the suspension, he was also rocked for 12 or more hits 3 times. Ray would finish the 1912 AL season with an 8-16 record and a 4.47 ERA.

Just before the start of the 1913 AL season, Ray would inaugurate Brooklyn’s new ballpark, Ebbets Field, in an exhibition game with the Dodgers. After a 2-1 loss to Joe Wood and Boston on April 14th, Ray’s arm trouble would resurface. The New Yorkers, who had another new manager in Frank Chance, were now called the Yankees and played their home games in the Polo Grounds. A St. Louis paper reported that Chance was considering converting Ray to an everyday outfielder (Globe-Democrat, June 6th). The New York Times reported on June 15th that Chance had put Ray on waivers. He apparently went unclaimed. In the meantime, he made numerous appearances as a pinch hitter and pinch runner, as well as some relief appearances. In late July, Ray was leading the American League in hitting with a .421 batting average. He would finish at .289. His season numbers reflected his versatility that year: while Ray had pitched in 27 games, also he had appeared in 59 games.

On July 31st, the “rejuvenated discard pitcher” threw a 4-hitter against Ed Cicotte and the White Sox. Ray was consistent the rest of the season, including 2 shutouts, a 2-hitter and a 3-hitter. He finished the season at 9-8 record with a respectable 2.41 ERA on a weak New York team. He also completed every game that he had started, except for his final start. Ray Caldwell was back and ready to make his mark in a big way.

Ray had a breakout season in 1914. Early on, he was spectacular: his 1st 3 games were shutouts. The New York Times described his 3-hitter on April 17th this way: “Ray Caldwell teased the champs [Philadelphia Athletics] with a slow, hypnotic floater, which dipped over the plate so easily that spectators in the grand stand [sic] could read Ban Johnson‘s signature on the leather.”

Slim would achieve a record of 17-9 on the 6th-place Yankees. He had a sparkling 1.94 ERA (4th best in the league) with 5 shutouts. As in 1913, he would complete all but 1 of the games that he started. Ray pitched well that summer; he was now the Yankee’s ace. Russ Ford had jumped to the upstart Federal League’s Buffalo Bisons (the Buffeds). On July 27th, Caldwell shut out the White Sox and he would beat the Indians on the 31st for his 17th win. The 1913 season had more than 2 months to go, yet Ray Caldwell had won his last game.

Ray showed his potential for greatness that year, but also his seeds of self-destruction. In August, after a couple of losses, Ray again “went by the wayside” and disappeared on a western roadtrip. Manager Frank Chance had warned Ray back in March that he wouldn’t tolerate the pitcher’s drinking or his “Broadway training.” He twice fined Ray during spring training for “falling by the wayside” (violating curfew and then not reporting the next day).

The tension between the fun-loving pitcher and the club’s stern taskmaster was never far from the surface. Ray was a happy-go-lucky fellow who loved the nightlife of the big city and never took training rules seriously. The Sporting News wrote in the summer of 1914 (on August 27th), “He [Caldwell] is one of those fellows who cannot say ‘No.’” While the paper did not elaborate, Ray was known as a consummate “ladies’ man.” Sporting Life was probably understating his predilection for alcohol when it wrote of his “occasional flirtation with that which is amber and foamy” (September 12th).

Yankees Manager Frank Chance would fine him $300. With penalties totaling $900 for the season, Ray left his team and responded to the overtures of the Federal League’s Buffalo team. Two stars of the Bisons were former teammates of Ray’s in New York, Pitcher Russ Ford and 1st baseman Hal Chase. Another Buffed was pitcher Hugh Bedient, who was from Gerry, New York, near Ray’s hometown.

Although Ray was under contract to the Yankees for the following season (not simply held by the reserve clause), he would signed with Buffalo on September 12,1914 and got a $2,500 advance. On that very day, Frank Chance announced his resignation as the Yankees’ skipper. He had been lured out or retirement by a large contract, $20,000 a year for 3 years. His New York Americans were a team of modest talent at the plate. While his pitching staff was decent (Caldwell, Ray Fisher, Ray Keating and in 1913 Russ Ford), Chance was frustrated with his Team's Owners for not spending more money on player payroll. He was angry with his scouts for not showing more skill in evaluating talent; he wanted MLB Scout Arthur Irwin fired. Shortly after taking over the team, which started 2-15 in 1913, he told Sid Keener, the sports editor of The Times (St. Louis): “I know there are boneheads in baseball, but I didn’t believe so many could get on 1 club. Mine.”

Ray Caldwell could have been included in that group and he was also involved in a key incident that triggered Chance’s resignation. Ray had appealed to Team Owner and President Frank Farrell to rescind his 1914 fines. Farrell would agreed, perhaps hoping such a reversal would prevent Ray from jumping to the rival Federal League and secure his return to the Yankees. When Chance learned of this overruling of his authority, it was the proverbial “last straw.” The World wrote, “The Caldwell matter was the real reason for Chance resigning.” (September 13,1914)

As the 1915 AL season began, the New York Yankees had new Team Owners, NYC Brewer Jacob Ruppert and Engineer Til Huston. They had hired former Detroit Tigers pitching star Wild Bill Donovan as their new Manager. Jovial and easygoing, Donovan immediately set out to bring Ray Caldwell back to the team. Sportswriter James Isaminger wrote, at least partly in jest, that Ray returned, when he learned that a Brewer bought the Yankees (Sporting Life, January 23,1915). More persuasive was the contract Ray was offered by New York: 3 years at $8,000 or $9,000 each, which was more than Buffalo had offered. The deal was finalized by early January. The Yankees sent $2,500 of that 1st year’s salary back to the Bisons. The Buffeds would sue Ray for breach of contract, he had signed for 3 years with them, but they didn’t file suit to force his return.

The World reported that Ray “had taken a liking to” his new manager and that he declared he’d win 30 games this season with ease (March 14,1915). Grantland Rice was just 1 observer eagerly anticipating the start of the season (Washington Post, March 12, 1915): “With the tall Yank in condition, a [Walter] Johnson-Caldwell battle will acquire as much class as the bygone duels between [Christy] Mathewson and [Mordecai] Brown.”

Unknown to most people at the time was that Johnson and Caldwell were being compared in another way. Like Ray, Johnson had jumped to the Federal League and also eventually returned to the American League. A few years later, both Fred Lieb (Evening Telegram, New York, January 15,1922) and Joe Vila (The Sun, March 16,1919) told a remarkable story: Washington Team President and Manager Calvin Griffith had offered Starter Walter Johnson to the new owners of the Yankees for Ray Caldwell during the time that both pitchers were flirting with the Federal League. American League President Ban Johnson advised the New York Owners not to accept the deal because Ray was so talented and had so much potential. Ray’s 17-9, despite missing 2 months of the season and his 1.94 ERA compared favorably with Johnson’s 28-18 with a 1.72 ERA.

Griffith wasn’t the only MLB manager interested in Ray, even after he had gone AWOL on his team. Sporting Life reported on September 12,1914 that Branch Rickey and the St. Louis Browns wanted to trade for Slim. On April 24,1915, Ray Caldwell would best Walter Johnson with a 2-hit shutout and the Yankee Team Owners must have felt good about Ban Johnson’s advice. Wild Bill Donovan’s Yankees got off to a terrific start, with a record of 10-4, then 17-9. In June, Ray put on an amazing hitting exhibition:

• June 10: Ray hits a pinch-hit HR in a loss to the White Sox

• June 11: Ray’s 3-run pinch-hit HR helps beat Chicago, 10-9

• June 12: Ray pitches and hits a HR in a 9-5 win over St. Louis Browns

The World‘s sports editor, Walter Trumbull, showed remarkable insight into the essence of Ray Caldwell (June 13,1915). “Caldwell is a boy who really likes to play baseball. When he is in condition, he is a great pitcher, one of the greatest in the game. This season he appears to be taking his profession seriously.
“Certain men, such as Ty Cobb and John McGraw, cannot bear to lose. If it is only pitching pennies at a crack, they put their whole heart into it. If the soul of Caldwell ever burns with this flame; if he ever acquires this fierce ambition to be better than the best, he will make a name for himself that will last as long as the game endures.”

In late August, Ray had a remarkable stretch of non-support by the Yankee hitters. Over 5 games, the Yankees scored only 1 run for him. Ray garnered only 1 win in that stretch, 1-0 over Detroit. Even then, he had to help himself: he had tripled and scored the game’s only run. Ray earned a cover of a 1916 Baseball magazine, with the headline, “Hard Luck Pitcher.” He had finished the 1915 AL season with a 19-16 record in 305 innings and a 2.89 ERA. The Yankees had faded to 69-83 record and finished in 5th place in AL.

Ray would opened the 1916 season with a classic 11-inning loss to Walter Johnson and Washington Senators by the score of 3-2. In early July, Ray would beat Johnson and the Nationals with a 1-0 3-hitter, also an 11-inning game. His lack of support from Yankee bats continued, as he lost by the scores of 2-1 and 1-0 in the next few days. Once again, Donovan’s Yankees started strong and held onto 1st place into July. Then the team experienced a tidal wave of injuries to many of its key players, including a shattered kneecap to Ray Caldwell. He would returned on July 25th and he was hammered by the White Sox, 13-8.

Starting on July 29th, the Yankees would lose 6 close games to the St. Louis Browns. Ray had dropped the 1st game, 3-1 and the next 5 were by the scores of 3-2, 2-1, 2-0, 4-2, and 3-2. The Browns Dave Davenport had won 3 of the games, including both ends of a double-header on the 29th. The Yankees were still in 1st place on the 29th. By August 15th, they were in 6th place in AL pennant race.
The team fell out of the AL pennant race and the pitcher fell off the wagon. Ray took “French leave” from his team, and the genial Yankee Manager felt forced to fine and suspend a player for the 1st time. It was Ray’s 1st punishment in a long stretch. The Sun reported of Ray’s “breaking out” and “failing to keep in condition” (August 2nd), as the press continued to use code words for drinking and partying. When Ray didn’t report to the team in mid-August, after a $100 fine and 15-day suspension, Donovan would suspended him again, this time for the balance of the 1916 AL season. Ray had finished with a 5-12 record, though his 2.99 ERA was only slightly higher than the previous year’s. The Yankees did finish in the 1st division (4th place) for the 1st time since 1910, at 80-74.

The Yankees were reeling, and their ace hurler was nowhere to be found. Where was Ray Caldwell? The Sporting News reported on September 21st that Ray had been a patient for alcohol treatment in a St. Louis hospital. The paper wrote that his cure was complete. There was no word that winter of Ray’s whereabouts. Then reports came back to the States that an American pitcher by the name of Collins was pitching for Colon in Panama. Collins was pitching well and bore an eerie resemblance to Ray Caldwell (The Sun, March 4th and March 6, 1917). As spring training 1917 approached, the missing Yankee ace got plenty of press, and most of it was negative. Here was the Washington Post on February 25th: “Caldwell is an example of a great pitcher going to ruin by his failure to take care of himself.”

The Yankees’ Co-Owner Til Huston was still seething over Ray’s leaving the team in the lurch the previous summer. He wondered aloud to New York reporters (The World, The Sun, March 2,1917) why the team should pay a high salary to such a bad influence on other players. Even Bill Donovan announced that he would no longer tolerate Ray’s “foolishness.” The Sporting News‘ Joe Vila minced no words, writing about Ray’s “desertion and dissipation” on March 8th:
“This fellow Caldwell is a most peculiar chap. He is sensitive and boyish, although he is 29 years old. He is good natured, intelligent and nervy when he faces the opposing batsmen. But he lacks self-control when temptation is near at hand and for that reason he has fallen from grace on several occasions.”

When Ray finally showed up at the Ne York Yankees’ spring training camp in Macon, Ga; he was tan and fit, ready for a big season and a week late. He said he’d been in New York during the winter, though The World called him “the Pearl of Panama.” The Yankees decided to give him another chance, in part because so much of their success depended on his arm and in part because he was in the last year of his player contract. The hope was that latter reality would keep Ray focused. And, as many times in the past, he was contrite, saying he had earned his lesson, though he never elaborated just what the lesson was.
Once again there were those in the press, who welcomed Ray back. The very issue of The Sporting News that had Vila’s critique had a more favorable article on the “erratic but brilliant” hurler, who, “in spite of his waywardness, is a good fellow at heart, popular with those who know him and all will welcome his return.”
Even Joe Vila was willing to forgive. He wrote of Ray’s recovery in late April, that the pitcher was in superb condition and “seemed determined to live down the unpleasant incidents of the past.”

That very week Ray was involved in another 1-0 decision. As so often in the past, he was on the losing end, this time to Joe Bush and the Philadelphia Athletics.
On June 17th, Ray would pitch in Manhattan’s 1st Sunday game, a 2-1 loss to the St. Louis Browns. On June 23rd, he beat the Athletics twice. He was lifted after 6 innings of the 1st game with a 9-0 lead and then he threw a complete-game 2-1 victory. Ray often seemed to do his best against the A’s and had a real admirer in their Team Owner/Manager, Connie Mack. “Put Ray Caldwell on a winning team and he would be one of the greatest pitchers of all time,” said Mack.

Just a few days later, Ray Caldwell was fined $100 and suspended for 10 days. He was out all night with young Yankees pitcher named Urban Shocker, whom Manager Donovan didn’t suspend (but did fine $50). Ray once again missed curfew and failed to report the next day. Joe Vila saw Caldwell’s fall from grace as “the last straw,” Caldwell having “lost his senses completely” (The Sporting News, July 5th). He urged that Ray be traded or permanently banned. Connie Mack then offered Outfielder Amos Strunk, who had hit .316 in 1916, in trade for Ray. The Yankees had turned the deal down.

Flashes of brilliance interspersed with legendary escapades. The day Ray returned from his suspension, July 10, he pitched 9⅔ innings of shutout ball in relief, winning a game against veteran Eddie Plank and the St. Louis Browns. That very night, Ray was arrested by St. Louis police and charged with grand larceny, stealing a $150 ring from Mrs. Lucy Dick (The World and The Sun, July 11th). New York immediately offered to trade Ray to the Browns for 2nd baseman Del Pratt, but St. Louis Browns would turned this deal down.

Ray still had some good pitching in him. In early August, “the slugger from Salamanca” (in western New York, where Ray lived) hit a HR, yet lost to Stan Coveleski and Cleveland Indians, 2-1. A week later, Ray’s wife Nellie charged abandonment and sued for support, demanding more than $100 of his monthly salary for herself and her 7-year-old son.

After not winning for almost a month, Ray won twice in early September, including a shutout over Washington. Then, once again, he went off the wagon. He was scheduled to pitch for a group of all stars in an exhibition game, to benefit the family of the late Boston sportswriter Tim Murnane, against the Red Sox in early October. With the Yankees unable to count on Ray, let alone locate him, they sent young pitcher Urban Shocker in his place. Ray would end 1917 AL season with a 13-16 record. For the 3rd year in a row, his ERA fell between 2.86 and 2.99 (2.86 in 1917). Bill Donovan did not survive past the end of the season. Once again, the Yankees were a disappointment; only this year, they were never in the thick of the pennant race. Miller Huggins, the skipper of the St. Louis Cardinals, had replaced Bill Donovan as the Yankees Manager.

Ray Caldwell was the 1st player Huggins met with, and the skipper set out his expectations. Huggins had considered including Ray in the big Del Pratt trade that he pulled off in January, but instead included another Yankee pitcher, Urban Shocker. After Huggins had signed Ray to a 1918 contract, Ray told the Washington Post he’d win 30 games that year.

Huggins would assign 2 private detectives to Ray, to keep him out of trouble and away from bars, yet Ray was often able to elude them. After tearing a muscle in his knee during spring training, Ray was totally ineffective in his 1st few starts. He developed a lame arm, and the Yankee skipper considered converting Ray into an outfielder. Ray’s bat was as effective as ever on May 13th, his pinch-hit double cleared the bases and beat Detroit, 3-2. On July 1st, his win over the Athletics put New York in 1st place. Yet the Yankees once again had another summer fade and by the start of August, they were in 4th place,10 games back.

Ray threw his only shutout of the season on August 1st, yet in mid-August he left the Yankees and joined the Tietjen and Long Drydock Company of New Jersey. Yankee teammates Ping Bodie and Hank Thormahlen were already working there. Both the shipbuilding and steel industries had baseball teams and were considered “essential services,” vital to the allied war effort. During World War I, a number of players joined such companies and were thus able to avoid the military draft. They had what were considered “soft jobs” and often earned $500 a week, representing their companies on the ball field.

Yet Ray had left without notice before the end of the season. He had finished with a 9-8 record and once again, his ERA was around 3.00, at 3.06. Joe Vila again declared that he should be banned from the game and brought up Ray’s past. “Caldwell never should have been taken back after Frank Chance suspended him in 1914,” he wrote on August 29th. Miller Huggins had enough of Ray too, and in December, he sent the talented yet troubled hurler to the Red Sox in a multi-player deal that brought OF Duffy Lewis and Pitcher Ernie Shore to New York. It was the 1st of many trades that Boston Owner Harry Frazee would make with the Yankees from late 1918 to early 1923. Fred Lieb wrote the comments at the top of this article when this trade was consummated.

Red Sox Player Photo
Dan Daniel of The Sun commented that Boston would be Ray’s final chance and that tough Red Sox skipper Ed Barrow would not put up with his antics. Ray’s stay in Boston was short. The team would release him in early July. While he had a 7-4 record, his ERA was 3.96. His Boston road roommate was another lover of nightlife, slugger Babe Ruth. It now appeared that Ray Caldwell’s MLB pitching career had come to an end.

Yet on August 19th, Tris Speaker, the Manager of the Cleveland Indians, had signed the 31-year-old hurler. There was no question that Ray still could contribute. The question revolved around his erratic behavior, repeatedly “falling off the wagon.” Speaker used a remarkable approach of reverse psychology. In his team history, The Cleveland Indians, Franklin Lewis relates the story of Ray’s reviewing the player contract.

“Slim buried his head in the printed sheet. ‘After each game he pitches, Ray Caldwell must get drunk. He is not to report to the clubhouse the next day. The 2nd day he is to report to Manager Speaker and run around the ball park as many times as Manager Speaker stipulates. The 3rd day he is to pitch batting practice, and the 4th day he is to pitch in a championship game.’
“Slim looked up ‘You left out one word, Tris,’ he said. ‘Where it says I’ve got to get drunk after every game, the word not has been left out. It should read that I’m not to get drunk.
“Speaker smiled. ‘No, it says that you are to get drunk.’ Slim shrugged his shoulders. ‘Okay, I’ll sign,’ he conceded.”
It worked. Ray would started 6 games at the end of the shortened (because of the recently concluded World War) season. He won 5 of them with a 1.71 ERA. “There was nothing more remarkable in the 1919 AL campaign than the remarkable ‘Slim’ Caldwell,” wrote Umpire and Columnist Billy Evans on January 11,1920 (Detroit News).

Cleveland Indians Player Photo

More remarkable than Babe Ruth’s stunning 29 HRs? Yes, especially because 2 of the 6 games were exceptional. On August 24th, in his 1st start in Cleveland’s League Park, Ray led the Philadelphia Athletics 2-1, with 2 outs in the 9th. Suddenly, bolts of lightning clustered over the ballpark. Sparks danced along the metal railings. Then Ray was hit by the lightning and knocked down, unconscious. One account said that the bolt had entered the metal button on the top of his cap and exited the metal spikes of his shoes. Ray later told the Cleveland Press, “It felt just like somebody came up with a board and hit me on top of the head and knocked me down.” A few minutes later, he arose and insisted on finishing the game. He quickly retired the final batter, Joe Dugan, to preserve the win. Years later, Robert Ripley of “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” paid Ray $100 to appear on his radio show.

Then, on September 10th, Ray would tossed a 3-0 no-hitter against his old team, the New York Yankees. The game propelled the Indians to a 10-game winning streak that brought them just short of the pennant. Ray and the Indians picked up in 1920, where they had left off in 1919. He had picked up the spitball in 1919 (taught by his new teammate Stan Coveleski?) and was designated as 1 of the 17 pitchers who could continue to throw the pitch even after it was banned early in 1920.

Ray was not overpowering during the 1920 AL season. Opponents had a .303 batting average against him this year, and he gave up well over a hit an inning.
Fred Lieb once wrote that there seemed to be an unwritten rule when Ray pitched for New York, “Thou shalt score no runs for Caldwell” (The Sun, June 18,1917). Only now, Ray had an offensive powerhouse behind him-the 1920 Indians also hit .303. The man who had lost his share of 1-0, 2-0 and 2-1 games won this year by scores of 9-7, 9-6, 8-5 and 7-5. He was effective the last few weeks of the season and never once did he violate training rules nor he was disciplined. On August 19th, he gave up Babe Ruth’s 43rd HR and still beat the Yankees, 3-2 to hold onto 1st place for Cleveland. Lieb then wrote in the Evening Telegram,

“Ray Caldwell is one of the marvels of the age. For years, he was in a class by himself for failing to take care of himself. Caldwell never looked better. He has his old smoke and his famous hop on the ball.”

Despite the death of shortstop Ray Chapman in August, the Indians would win their 1st AL pennant, edging the White Sox by 2 games and the Yankees by 3. Cleveland was led by 3-20-game winners. One was Ray Caldwell at 20-10. His 3.86 ERA was almost a full run higher than his previous 7 seasons, yet this was the 1st year of the Lively Ball Era. The league’s ERA rose about 1 run higher than it had been in the previous decade.

After the Cleveland Indians and the Brooklyn Robins would split the 1st 2 games of the 1920 World Series (won by staff aces Stan Coveleski and Burleigh Grimes), Ray Caldwell got the nod to start Game 3. After a decade in the majors, he had finally reached the big stage. He did not make it out of the 1st inning. Ray gave up 2 runs in 1/3 of an inning on a walk, a Joe Sewell error and 2 hits (one a bloop single). Perhaps because Ray had been less effective as the regular season came to a close, Speaker did not stay long with him. He really couldn’t be faulted for making a change in pitchers. In 6⅔ innings of scoreless relief, Duster Mails gave up only 3e hits. But Brooklyn’s Sherry Smith tossed a 3-hitter as the Robins won, 2-1. Ray did not appear again in the World Series, which the Indians won. In the off-season, he worked in the auto business with teammate Steve O’Neill.

In 1921, Tris Speaker would move Ray to the Tribe bullpen. After starting 33 of his 34 games in 1920, he had started only 12 of his 37 appearances in 1921. In early September, Speaker suspended Ray for violating “rules of discipline.” He was “up to his old tricks,” wrote Joe Vila in The Sun (September 7th). When Ray begged for forgiveness, Speaker would reinstate him. The cycle that had been vintage Ray Caldwell was playing out again.
Ray would bounced back with 2 of his 6 1921 wins, his only shutout of the season, over the Philadelphia Athletics and a 5-1 win over Boston. The latter game pulled the Indians into a tie for 1st place with New York. A few days later, Ray went to the mound against the Yankees, with his Indians still tied for 1st. Ray was driven from the mound in the 2nd inning and the Yankees went on to slaughter the Indians, 21-7. The Tribe would never recovered, the Yankees had won their 1st AL pennant and Ray Caldwell never started another MLB game.

Ray, next embarked on a 12-year minor-league career, primarily in the Southern Association and also in the American Association. Despite twice winning 20 or more games, he never again was proffered a MLB player contract. His reputation for drinking and partying and his pattern of falling off the wagon kept the scouts away. Still, he stayed in the game he loved for more than a decade, winning more than 140 games.

From 1922 to 1924, Ray would pitched for the AA Kansas City Blues (American Association). He had won 22 games in his 1st year and then he won 16 games in 1923, when his team won the AA pennant. That team, with a record of 112-54, is considered 1 of the greatest minor league teams of all time, yet they barely nosed out St. Paul Saints (111-57) for the AA pennant. The Blues would then face the International League’s Baltimore Orioles in the Little World Series. The Orioles has just set a record by winning their 5th straight IL pennant. They were led by fireball phenom Lefty Groves (spelled with an ‘s’ in those days). Groves would beat Ray in Game 2, 3-1 and Ray returned the favor in Game 6. The Series went the full 9 games, with Kansas City taking the title. Their 19-game winner, who won 3 games in the series, was another New York (Giants) hurler of the ‘teens, Ferdie Schupp.

The following spring, in early April 1924, the Blues’ Ray Caldwell had shut out the Pittsburgh Pirates in an exhibition game, 2-0. Still, no invitation came from any MLB club. The following year, Ray would moved to Little Rock (Southern Association) for 3 seasons. His Travelers would finished in last place all 3 years and Ray led the league in losses in both 1926 and 1927, with 22 and 20, respectively. His ERA rose from 3.41 to 5.27 in 1927. Late in that season, the AA Milwaukee Brewers (American Association) had picked up Ray for their late-season AA pennant run. He went 0-3 in 5 games and at the age of 39, his baseball playing days seemed over.

Yet, Ray would hook up with Memphis in 1928. He won 10 games, and the Chickasaws finished in 2nd place. The following year, he would drop down to Akron (Central League), managed by the venerable John McCloskey. Ray appeared in only 8 games, had a 6.29 ERA, and then drifted to a semi-pro ball club. It was here that Johnny Dobbs, former MLB player and now Manager of the Birmingham Barons, had spotted Ray. Dobbs felt that Ray could still pitch and signed him for the Southern Association team late in the 1929 season. Ray would respond with a 4-2 record with a sparkling 1.79 ERA. The Barons won the Southern Association pennant and went on to beat the Dallas Steers 4 games to 2 in the Dixie World Series. Ray won 2 of the 4 games. In 1930, Ray would continue his impressive comeback with a 20-12 record for the 3rd place Barons, though his ERA jumped to 4.43. In 1931, Ray would pitch 248 innings, just 2 innings less than the prior year. Ray had won 19 contests and lowered his ERA to 3.45. His Barons, now managed by Clyde Milan, won their 2nd pennant in 3 years.

Their opponents in the Dixie Series were the Houston Buffaloes, led by a 21-year-old pitcher named Dizzy Dean, with his 26-10 record, 11 shutouts, and 303 strikeouts. The brash hurler predicted (quoted in Robert Gregory’s Diz), “If I don’t beat them Barons, I’ll join the House of David and grow a beard and never, never shave it. It would hide my shame.”
Ray was now 43 and a grandfather now. He had just gotten married for the 3rd time a couple of weeks earlier (Gregory). More than 20,000 fans crammed into Birmingham’s Rickwood Field to see Dean vs. Caldwell in Game 1. Veteran sportswriter Zipp Newman called it “strength of youth vs. the guile of the years.” Ray’s fastball was a thing of the past, with only 57 strikeouts that year. He threw a lot of off-speed pitches and had mastered control, with only 36 walks that season.

Ray would beat Dean 1-0 in the ballgame and his 8th-inning hit set up the winning run. Dean came back to beat Ray in Game 4, 2-0. With the series tied at 3 games apiece, Dean started the deciding game. The Barons called on “old man Caldwell” in the 9th inning, to protect the lead. He had struck out the Texas League’s HR and RBI leader, Joe Medwick and preserved the win for Birmingham.

Early in 1932, Ray would injured his knee and was on crutches the rest of the 1932 season. In April of 1933, the Barons would released him and he briefly joined his old Manager, Johnny Dobbs, with Class B Charlotte (Piedmont League). Ray would finished his playing career later that year with Keokuk (Mississippi Valley League). He had pitched more than 2,200 innings with 133 wins in the majors and 2,200 innings with 159 wins in the minors.

The following year Ray was involved in a short-lived barnstorming Old-Timers’ Club, based in Los Angeles. Ray hoped it would provide a venue for him to continue playing ball after retirement. Other former players involved in the ill-fated venture included Ivy Olson, Chief Meyers and Mike Gazella. Ray then Umpired in the Michigan State League. A few years later, during July 4th weekend, 1938, Ray would surfaced in a Cleveland exhibition game, pitting the 1908 Indians (who fell just short of the pennant) and the 1920 Tribe (who won the World Series). Ray had managed a ball-club only briefly, when he skippered Fremont (Ohio State League), early in the 1940 season. The 52-year-old even pitched a game for his team and was knocked out of the box.

Ray would settled near where he grew up, only now he was across the border in the Jamestown, New York area. In 1940, he had a farm in Frewsburg, New York. He enjoyed hunting, chopping wood and playing handball. Ray would returned to telegraphy, his trade both before his pro baseball career and during the off-seasons. (Passengers would send messages, while they were travelling.) He would worked at the Asheville, New York station, near Jamestown.In 1939, Ray married for the 4th time, to Estelle Sheppard of Lorain, Ohio. She too was a divorcee, and Ray now helped raise his 4 stepdaughters. One of them, Irene, recalled that he was a perfect gentleman and often reminded the girls to behave like “ladies.” Another stepdaughter, Jacqueline, remembered her stepdad’s modesty; he wasn’t a braggart. Yet he loved to talk baseball.

Ray worked as the steward of the Lakewood, New York (suburb of Jamestown) Rod and Gun Club. He tended bar, and Estelle did the cooking. He also ran the Red Wing tavern in nearby Onoville, which was owned by local ballplayer Ty Crandall. Both Ray’s birthplace, Corydon, Pennsylvania, and Onoville, New York, were put underwater in the 1960s by the Kinzua Dam and the Allegheny Reservoir.

In 1948, Ray Caldwell was named to the all-time Kansas City Blues team, along with Vince DiMaggio, Al Rosen and Wilcy Moore (Chicago Tribune, August 4,1948). In 1950, the 40th anniversary of Birmingham’s Rickwood Field, Ray was honored at a pre-game ceremony. A year later, he and Dizzy Dean appeared together at a Birmingham dinner commemorating the 20th anniversary of the 1931 Dixie Series.

In 1953, Jamestown started a “Sports Hall of Fame Night,” when the locals honored 2 sports figures, a veteran and a modern-day player. Erik “Swat” Erickson and Irv Noren, respectively, were the 1st honorees. Ray received the veteran’s award the following year and Hugh Bedient got it a year later.

In 1961, Ray needed a cataract operation and the Randolph, New York Lions Clubhelped raised money for the surgery with a big barbecue. Hal Leibowitz, a sportswriter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, publicized his plight. Ray had spent time in Ohio, where 2 of his stepdaughters lived. He had conducted free baseball clinics in Fremont, during summers. The successful eye operation was done at the Cleveland Academy of Medicine by Dr. Charles Thomas. Chic Thomas was a big Indians’ fan and had treated Herb Score a few years earlier.

That same year Ray spoke out in favor of legalizing the spitter. The movement, which ultimately failed, included American League President Joe Cronin and MLB Commissioner Ford Frick in its ranks. In the 1960s, Ray was a greeter at the Golden Nugget Casino in Las Vegas. He died of cancer in Salamanca, New York on August 19, 1967. Ray was buried in Randolph. Estelle, who died in the early 1990s, is buried at his side. Ray’s son by his 1st marriage, James, also passed away in the 1990s.

Ray Caldwell was known as much for his extracurricular activities as for his mound exploits. Fred Lieb wrote in The Sporting News (April 27,1933), “He was one of the playboys of his time. Caldwell loved baseball, but he loved the high lights better.” He never realized the potential of his incredible baseball talent, which seemed so promising in the mid-‘teens. In 1924, Miller Huggins looked back at his erratic pitcher:

“Caldwell was one of the best pitchers that ever lived, but he was one of those characters that keep a manager in a constant worry. If he had possessed a sense of responsibility and balance, Ray Caldwell would have gone down in history as one of the greatest of all pitchers.” (San Francisco Chronicle, serialized column, March 14,1924)

Caldwell, the Guy Called Slim

There he slouches, cool and grinning,

In the straining, crucial inning,

For there’s nothing in the world that bothers him;

With a careless swing he meets it,

Like a streak of light he beats it;

Something happens when they send the call for Slim.

He’s the reinforcing propping

When the Yankees take to dropping;

He’s a bunch of nerve and made-to-order vim;

It is certain while they’ve got him

That the Yankees won’t hit bottom;

When they’re in a hole they’ll simply call on Slim.

By Right Cross, 1914, quoted by Frank Hyde, Jamestown Post-Journal

Last Edit: Apr 20, 2024 20:17:25 GMT -5 by fwclipper51

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Post by fwclipper51 on Apr 25, 2024 15:15:17 GMT -5

MLB's oldest living player is turning 100
Art Schallock pitched for the Yankees and Orioles in the 1950s
12:00 AM EDT MLB.com
Dan Cichalski, Edited by Clipper
Dan Cichalski@NJ_baseball

Art Schallock was born on April 25, 1924.(Wendy Cornejo/Cogir on Napa Road)

On Thursday, Major League Baseball’s oldest living player turns 100 years old.

Art Schallock, a left-hander, who had pitched in 58 games with the New York Yankees and the Baltimore Orioles over a 5-year MLB playing career in the 1950s, will celebrate the milestone with family and friends at Cogir on Napa Road, the senior living facility in Sonoma, Calif., where he resides.

Memorabilia from his playing career will be on display, he will sign some baseballs and staff at the facility will dress up in Yankees gear, serve a Yankees-themed cake and roll out the literal red carpet.

“Those were some great times,” Schallock said of his time with the Yankees, which included three World Series championships. “Hard to believe I’m hitting 100, but looking back on my life, I’m grateful for the experiences I’ve had.”

Schallock was born on April 25, 1924, in Mill Valley, Calif., about 9 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge -- which is 13 years younger than he is. After graduating from high school in 1942, Shallock registered for the military draft and joined the Navy. He spent time as a radio operator on the USS Coral Sea, earning 11 battle stars for action that included the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

“I was 2 weeks out of high school when they drafted me,” Schallock told SABR biographer Bill Nowlin. “I went in the Navy and I didn’t see a baseball for 3 years.”

Discharged in 1946, Schallock would played semi-pro ball in San Francisco that summer before signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers. He would spend Spring Training 1947 with the club in Havana, training with their Triple-A Montreal Royals affiliate alongside Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe.

Schallock would pitched for the Brooklyn Dodgers affiliates until 1951, when the Yankees, in need of a left-handed pitcher, had purchased his player contract. Following a rough stretch for its pitching staff, New York would called up Schallock on July 12, 1951 and sent down struggling 19-year-old rookie Outfielder Mickey Mantle to the AAA Kansas City Blues (American Association).

“They had to send someone down and it turned out to be Mickey Mantle,” Schallock told interviewer Ed Attanasio. “He came back quickly, but for many years Mickey and I would joke about it.”

Phil Rizzuto, Joe DiMaggio, Art Schallock and Manager Casey Stengel in July, 1951.

Though Mantle was sent down, Schallock found himself getting close with another Hall of Famer, when he learned who his Yankees roommate would be.

“I didn’t know who they would assign me to be with,” Schallock told Attanasio. “I figured it would be with another rookie or another young player, but when they told me it would be Yogi Berra, I was surprised. It was a great experience, because Yogi knew all of the batters in the American League at that time. He knew how to pitch to them and what their weaknesses were. Yogi never wrote anything down; it was all up there in his head. He knew his stuff and I learned a lot from him. People used to joke about Yogi being not that smart, but he was sharp as a tack and a wonderful guy.”

From 1951-1954, Schallock would appeared in 28 games (8 starts) with the New York Yankees, topping out at 11 in his rookie season. He was placed on waivers in April 1955, Schallock went to the Baltimore Orioles and was called upon 30 times that season, while making 6 starts. He allowed 11 HRs in his MLB pitching career – and the last 1 was hit by Mantle.

“[W]hen I was pitching for the Orioles, he hit a monster HR against me and smiled all around the bases,” Schallock once said.

Schallock inherited the title of the oldest living player upon the death of George Elder in July 2022.

“Art loves to reminisce about his time with the Yankees and the other teams,” said Wendy Cornejo, executive director of the senior living community where Schallock resides. “He lights up when he’s talking about baseball. We hope to make his birthday a fitting celebration of his long life and exciting accomplishments.”

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Clipper's Player Remembrance Megathread May 1, 2024 9:32:48 GMT -5 kaybli and inger like this

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Post by jiminy on May 1, 2024 9:32:48 GMT -5

Former Atlanta Braves outfielder Gary Cooper missed qualifying for an MLB pension by one day. They said he was the fastest man in baseball.
Thanks to a rainout, Cooper was sent back down to the minor leagues and never played in the MLB again.
www.11alive.com/article/sports/mlb/atlanta-braves/former-braves-player-one-day-shy-mlb-pension-rainout-hopes-team-resign-him/85-56d4c037-8b95-4e46-92bd-3bc3ec1abd63

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Post by inger on May 1, 2024 13:04:20 GMT -5

May 1, 2024 9:32:48 GMT -5 jiminy said:

With all the money there is in the sport, this has to happen. At 67 landscaping is grueling work. I’d be fine knowing that some of the money I spend on the TV to watch went to a wonderful solution for this gentleman. Do it Braves!…

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Clipper's Player Remembrance Megathread May 2, 2024 9:31:48 GMT -5 kaybli likes this

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Post by jiminy on May 2, 2024 9:31:48 GMT -5

NY Post | Greg Joyce: Joel Sherman wrote a detailed eight-part series for the Post back in 2020 on the 1990 Yankees and the hectic year that they had, mostly for off-the-field instances obscuring the barebones of the future dynasty being fleshed out. That series got picked up and turned into a documentary airing on Peacock, and the Post has a trailer for the three-part doc ahead of its release on May 16th.

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Clipper's Player Remembrance Megathread May 2, 2024 12:41:59 GMT -5 kaybli and chiyankee like this

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Post by fwclipper51 on May 2, 2024 12:41:59 GMT -5

Looking Back at the 1990 New York Yankees

With the horrific start the New York Yankees have gotten off to in 2005, there is cheering in Boston and wherever haters of Steinbrenner's guys exist - and that's a lot of places. The current team is old, brittle, over-paid and over-rated - that's the gleeful line put out there by legions of Yankee haters.

The whole scenario conjurs up the memory of what many feel was the "worst Yankee team" - the 1990 edition.

The Yankees began their 1990 AL season in New York. Billy Martin's son threw out the 1st ball to the cheers of 50,114 fans. By day's end the Yankees had a 6-4 win over the Indians. It was Luis Polonia's hit that broke a tie to put the Yankees ahead. No gratitude, though. Two weeks later, he was traded to the California Angels for veteran OF/DH Claudell Washington.

The 1990 New York Yankees were relatively young, average age 28.2 years. Bucky Dent had been on the scene as Manager from August 18, 1989. On June 6,1990 with the Yankees in 7th place at 18-31, Dent got the axe and he was replaced by Yankees Minor League Manager Stump Merrill up from their AAA Columbus farm team.

"Here we have a fellow who doesn't come with a whole lot of glamour," George Steinbrenner smiled as he said it. "For the 1st 5 years I knew him I kept calling him 'Lump.' He was madder than hell." There were lots of times through the 1990 season and also 1991, Stump's last a Yankees pilot, that he was "madder than hell."

The 1990 Yankees would score 603 runs, but they had allowed 749 runs. Their pitchers didn't lead the league in any category except for Tim Leary, who had the most losses - 19.

Their hitters were even worse. As a team, the Yankees batted an American League low .241. Bragging rights for the team's best player belonged to 30-year old Jesse Barfield, with a .246 average with 25 HRs. Also, he had struck out 150 times becoming the 1st Yankee to earn that dishonor. It was partly due to Jesse that the Yankees came within 16 strikeouts of their worst ever total, 1,043 in 1967. Outfielder Roberto Kelly, who would not walk, had the best batting average (.285), but he had fanned 148 times.

The catching position was woeful. The full-time catcher was Bob Geren, .213 average, never a fulltime catcher again. His backup was Matt Nokes (8 HRs, .238). His backup was Brian Dorsett, who had 5 hits in 35 at bats.

The best Yankee starting lineup most of the time that season would featured Geren at backstop. Don Mattingly played 1st base, sometimes. He complained of a bad back, got into only 89 games, batted .256 with just 5 HRs and 42 RBIs. Steve Sax 2B (who made the 1990 AL All-Star team, wound up with a .260 average, 43 stolen bases), Randy Velarde with a .210 average was at 3rd base a lot. Shortstop Alvaro Espinoza finished the season with 2 HRs and 20 RBIs.

The starting outfield was Mel Hall (12 HRs, 46 RBIs), team batting champ Roberto Kelly (.285, 42 stolen bases) and Jesse Barfield. Oscar Azocar also played the outfield and in 214 at-bats, had walked twice. He never saw a pitch he didn't like. He would hit .248. He would be traded to the San Deigo Padres in the off-season for Minor League OF Mike Humphreys.

Other non-pitchers taking up roster space included: rookie utility man Jimmy Leyritz with a .257 BA, 5 HRs and Dave Winfield, who had hit .213 in 38 games before he was traded on May 11th to the California Angels for veteran Starter Mike Witt. The lanky and controversial outfielder at first balked at the trade and then he would realized the Yankees were doing him a favor. Five days later, he would report to the Angels.

On August 2nd, rookie 1st baseman Kevin Maas had hammered his 10th HR in just 77 at bats. It was the quickest any player reached that mark. But predictably, the Yankees lost another tough game, 6-5 in 11 innings to the Tigers. Maas wound up with 21 round-trippers in 254 at-bats and writers raved about his sweet lefty swing, just made for Yankee Stadium's short RF porch. He would fizzle out, but at least he flamed for a while which was not what could be said about a lot of the other 1990 Yankees.

There was also was 1B/DH Steve "Bye Bye” Balboni with 17 HRs, but with a .192 batting average, Catcher/DH Matt Nokes, Catcher Rick Cerone, 3B Mike Blowers, OF Deion Sanders, 3B Hensley Meulens, OF Claudell Washington with a injuries hand, hitting just.162 in 33 games, INF Wayne Tolleson, OF Luis Polonia (traded to Angels) and Reserve INF Jim Walewander (.200).

The only Yankee starting pitcher to win more than 7 games was 9 game winner Tim Leary. But he also lost 19 before Manager Stump Merrill showed some pity and took him out of the starting rotation, so he wouldn’t be a 20-game loser.
The other Bronx starters were Dave La Point (7-10), Chuck Cary (6-12), Andy Hawkins (5-12), who did get everyone excited on July 1,1990, when he threw and lost a no-hitter, 4-0 against the Chicago White Sox and veteran starter Mike Witt (5-6). Rookie starter Steve Adkins make his MLB pitching debut on September 12, 1990. He didn't allow a hit, but he had walked 8 batters in just 1 1/3 innings. The 25-year-old rookie was 1-2 with a 6.38 ERA in 5 starts and never pitched again in the Majors after the 1990 AL season had ended.

Others pitchers, who took the ball to the hill with not that much success for the Bombers included: Greg Cadaret, Eric Plunk, Jimmy Jones, Alan Mills, Dave Eiland, Mark Leiter, Clay Parker, Lance McCullers, Pascual Perez, John Habyan and Rich Monteleone and Jeff Robinson. One of the few bright spots on the pitching staff was Bronx Closer Dave Righetti, who had 36 saves. Lee Guetterman went 11-7.

On June 30,1990, New York Yankees Team Owner George Steinbrenner was banned by MLB Commissioner Fay Vincent from the day-to-day operations of the Yankees because of his alleged dealings with a known convicted gambler, Howard Spria. "The Boss" became the 1st American League Team Owner ever to be removed by disciplinary action. Then Steinbrenner would resigned as Managing General Partner of the Yankees and watched from the sidelines the miserable season finally ended.

The hapless 1990 New York Yankees would finish 21 games behind the Boston Red Sox in the AL East Division, the 1st time during the George Steinbrenner era that the Yankees would finished in last place.

Clippers Note: The worst New York Yankees team in franchise would be the 1912 team, who had finished in last place with a 50-102 record under the leadership of Harry Wolverton, who would be replace by Frank Chance then followed by the 1966 Yankees under Manage Ralph Houk with a 70-89 record in last place (10th place).

Last Edit: May 3, 2024 20:06:37 GMT -5 by fwclipper51

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Clipper's Player Remembrance Megathread May 2, 2024 19:26:06 GMT -5

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Post by fwclipper51 on May 2, 2024 19:26:06 GMT -5

May 1, 2024 13:04:20 GMT -5 inger said:

May 1, 2024 9:32:48 GMT -5 jiminy said:

In past,a team would add him to MLB roster for the amount of time that he needed. I do remember the Braves did that a hurler name Ron Riche for 30 days.

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Clipper's Player Remembrance Megathread May 2, 2024 19:37:49 GMT -5 via mobile kaybli and 1955nyyfan like this

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Post by inger on May 2, 2024 19:37:49 GMT -5

Just a quick word of thanks to the Clipper for posting these detailed historical abstracts. They’ll basically be here “forever” as a reference. It’s an amazing labor of love from you and a valuable point of reference for this forum…

Thank you! …

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Clipper's Player Remembrance Megathread May 2, 2024 21:38:53 GMT -5

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Post by kaybli on May 2, 2024 21:38:53 GMT -5

May 2, 2024 19:37:49 GMT -5 inger said:

Yes, thank you very much Clipper! These have been an invaluable addition to the forum for sure!

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Clipper's Player Remembrance Megathread May 3, 2024 5:27:37 GMT -5 via mobile kaybli and inger like this

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Post by pippsheadache on May 3, 2024 5:27:37 GMT -5

May 2, 2024 19:26:06 GMT -5 fwclipper51 said:

May 1, 2024 13:04:20 GMT -5 inger said:

In past,a team would add him to MLB roster for the amount of time that he needed. I do remember the Braves did that a hurler name Ron Riche for 30 days.

I didn't know that about Ron Piche. A baseball card guy for me. The Braves one year had three Canadian-born relief pitchers on the roster -- Piche, Claude Raymond and Ken MacKenzie. That always stuck in my mind. I can't remember where I left my keys, but I can remember that. The important stuff.

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Clipper's Player Remembrance Megathread May 3, 2024 11:18:56 GMT -5 via mobile

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Post by inger on May 3, 2024 11:18:56 GMT -5

May 3, 2024 5:27:37 GMT -5 pippsheadache said:

May 2, 2024 19:26:06 GMT -5 fwclipper51 said:

In past,a team would add him to MLB roster for the amount of time that he needed. I do remember the Braves did that a hurler name Ron Riche for 30 days.

😂

fwclipper51
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Clipper's Player Remembrance Megathread May 3, 2024 20:02:57 GMT -5 kaybli likes this

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Post by fwclipper51 on May 3, 2024 20:02:57 GMT -5

Pitcher Howie Kitt: The New York Yankees; $80,000 Gamble that Failed

1960 Player Photo

Howie Kitt of Oceanside, NY, who had just completed his freshman year at Columbia University, was the starting pitcher for the New Yorkers. In his 3 innings of work, the left hander allowed no hits. His 7 strikeouts (6 of them were consecutive) set a Hearst Sandlot Classic record. He so impressed the writers in attendance that he was named the game’s MVP. His only regret was that he couldn’t pitch longer in the Hearst game. He said, “I wish I could have pitched more than 3 innings. I thought I may go all the way for a no-hitter.”

Before Kitt began to attract scouts, he had attended a Little League Clinic, where scout Art Dede told Kitt, a left hander, to try to be a catcher. Kitt, after hitting a batter when trying to make a throw to 2nd base, decided to become an outfielder. As a young boy, Kitt lived with his family in Brooklyn and attended P. S. 139 in Flatbush. The family was part of the massive migration to the suburbs of the early 1950’s and settled in Oceanside, Long Island. It wasn’t until his sophomore year at Oceanside High School that he became a pitcher. During his sandlot days, he would hurl 15 no-hitters. Scout Dede followed Kitt’s progress and eventually subsequently inked Howie’s name to a contract.

Kitt was signed by the New York Yankees to an $80,000 bonus. Kitt’s Sandlot experience was with the Nathan’s Famous team. He had a 40-1 record in High School and his senior year in high school was legendary. He went 18-0, struck out 217 batters in 117 innings, walked 75, allowed 52 hits, and had an ERA of .05. After high school, he had attended Columbia University. While a freshman at Columbia in 1960, he had struck out 46 batters in 23 innings. That summer, in the Queens-Nassau Alliance, pitching for Havenwood A. C., he had posted an 8-0 record and did not allow an earned run.

He would return to Columbia University after the Hearst game, but left the school for the Yankees prior in his sophomore season, signing on Thanksgiving Day, November 24,1960. At the time he signed, he said, “I’ve established certain ties here (at Columbia), and made some fine friendships. A degree would mean a great deal, but I feel that I’d get more compensation from playing professional ball, so I must make some sacrifices. I know that I am just a kid entering a man’s game, and have a lot to learn. Although it’s flattering for others to compare me with Lou Gehrig, at present, my major aim is to make the major leagues.”

He would spend 5 seasons pitching in the New York minor league system, but his wildness had caught up with him at Triple-A, where he went 0-9, while walking 65 batters in 53 innings. Yankees MLB Scout Jim McElroy has another take on what caused Kitt’s pitching career to be cut short. The way he tells it, Kitt was pitching in the minors and went to get a drink at the water cooler. There was an electric wire going from an outlet to the water cooler and it was lying across the floor of the dugout. Kitt had stepped on the wire with his spikes; there was a spark; and he had burnt his foot. The foot injury forced him to change his pitching delivery and he never regained his form. Howie Kitt would retire from the New York Yankees Minor League system in the fall of 1965 with a 37-44 record along with a 4.21 ERA in 117 games.

fwclipper51
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Clipper's Player Remembrance Megathread May 6, 2024 17:28:20 GMT -5 kaybli likes this

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Post by fwclipper51 on May 6, 2024 17:28:20 GMT -5

Former Yankees Catcher Aaron Robinson

This article was written by Mark Stewart, Edited by Clipper

The leading member of the 1947 Yankees’ catchers-by-committee group, Aaron Robinson was behind the plate in 74 games, more than any of his fellow backstops. But perhaps his most important role that season was helping groom his eventual successor, future Hall of Famer Yogi Berra.

Aaron Andrew Robinson was born on June 23,1915, in Lancaster, South Carolina, a small town an hour or so south of Charlotte, North Carolina. Both his father, Charles Augustus “Gus” Robinson, and his mother, Jennie (McAteer) Robinson, were descendants of Scotch-Irish settlers. Gus died in 1953, at age 69, but Jennie lived to 104, outliving her son by a quarter-century.

Aaron grew to be tall and powerfully built, at 6 foot 2 and 205 pounds. A left-handed batter, with a strong throwing arm and a good head for baseball, he played catcher and 3rd base during his school days and sandlot career. Robinson began his pro baseball career in 1937, after the New York Yankees had signed him just before his 22nd birthday. He would report to his 1st spring camp as a married man, having wed Myrtle McManus on February 6th. The couple would produce 6 children: Sybil, (1938-2004), Joanne, Mary Ann (born and died 1941), Gerald (1946-2008), Charles, and David. They were eventually divorced. Robinson later married the former Eva Ransom.

Robinson’s 1st stop on his way to the Major Leagues was with the Snow Hill (North Carolina) Billies of the Class D Coastal Plain League. He would climb up the Yankees farm system, hitting above .300 at almost every stop. He played 3rd base in 1937 and 1938, after which the Yankees decided to move him to catcher. In 1942, he became the regular catcher for the International League Newark Bears and in 1943 he got the call to the big leagues. He soon became known for shouting a resounding “Where was that ball?” when he felt an umpire had missed a call.

Robinson would played his 1st game on May 6,1943 and he struck out in a pinch-hitting appearance. He went into the Coast Guard before playing another game with the Yankees, and did not return until 1945. After being discharged, Robinson would rejoined the Yankees at the end of July and played in 50 games in 1945. He batted .281 with 8 HRs, while sharing catching duties with Mike Garbark.

In 1946, with more players coming out of the service, the catching situation for the Yankees continued to evolve. Manager Joe McCarthy, unimpressed with his options in spring training, tabbed veteran star Bill Dickey as his starting backstop, at least to begin the year. The 39-year-old Dickey, back after 2 years in the Navy, caught the bulk of the games in April and May. Robinson was picked to spell Dickey in the early going and hit .300 in this role. When Yankees Manager McCarthy had abruptly resigned in May, Dickey replaced him as Manager and benched himself. Robinson would become the starter.

Though injury-prone, the 31-year-old Robinson did the bulk of the catching the last 4-months of the 1946 AL season. Gus Niarhos came up from AAA Kansas City Blues in June and in late September, 21-year-old Yogi Berra joined the team from the AAA Newark Bears. Robinson would continued to hit with authority, finishing with 16 HRs and 64 RBIs. He belted 2 of those HRs in successive innings off of Indians All Star Bob Feller on July 11th in New York. The 2 one was a grand slam HR, the only one of his MLB playing career.

Yankees Catchers Aaron Robinson, Ralph Houk and Yogi Berra

Robinson’s .506 slugging percentage was the highest of his big-league career. He also became the answer to a trivia question that no doubt won countless bar bets over the years: On the 3rd-place Yankees of 1946, a team that included Joe DiMaggio, Charlie Keller, Joe Gordon, Phil Rizzuto, Bill Dickey, and Tommy Henrich-who led the regulars in batting? The answer is Aaron Robinson, at .297.

Robinson garnered a handful of Most Valuable Player votes, finishing higher than any other catcher in the American League. He came to camp in 1947 solidly ensconced as the Yankees’ No. 1 catcher. Bucky Harris had been hired to restore order to New York’s managerial situation, while Bill Dickey set about teaching young Berra the finer points of big-league backstopping.

Meanwhile, Robinson did a creditable job handling the improved Yankees pitching staff. He was named to the AL All-Star team, but spent the entire contest on the bench. In the season’s 2nd half, Bucky Harris and Bill Dickey felt Berra was ready to handle half the catching duties, so Robinson and Yogi split the job the rest of the way. Sherm Lollar, a catching prospect acquired from the Indians, also saw action down the stretch. Berra was clearly the superior offensive player. Robinson finished the year with a .270 average, but he had only 21 extra-base hits and a mere 36 RBIs. Robinson would hit HRs in both games of a June 4th doubleheader against the Tigers in Detroit and he had a 3-hit, 5-RBIs game in the 2nd game of an August 24th doubleheader against the White Sox at Chicago. He had a strong finish to the season, fashioning an 11-game hitting streak in September.

During the 1947 World Series against the Dodgers, Manager Bucky Harris used all 3 of his catchers. Robinson started twice: Game 5 in Brooklyn and the Game 7 finale in the Bronx. The Yankees won both. In Game 5, Robinson worked a 2-out walk off of Rex Barney and then came around to score the game’s 1st run when pitcher Frank Shea singled to left. The Yankees went on to win, 2-1, behind rookie Spec Shea’s complete-game performance.

Robinson subbed for Sherman Lollar in Game 6, an 8–6 Dodgers victory. He had entered the game in the top of the 4th inning and singled to center to lead off the bottom of the frame. Berra, in the game as an outfielder, subsequently singled him in to give New York a 5-4 lead. The Yankees failed to hold Brooklyn and found themselves trailing 8-5 with 3 outs to go. Robinson singled to load the bases with 1 out against Reliever Hugh Casey. Pinch-hitter Lonnie Frey hit into a force play, erasing Robinson at 2nd as a run scored. Casey then got Snuffy Stirnweiss to hit a comebacker for the final out.

Game 7 found Robinson behind the plate and Spec Shea on the mound again. The Yankees had spotted Brooklyn 2 early runs but it could have been much worse. In the 1st inning, Eddie Stanky led off with a single. With Pee Wee Reese at the plate, Stanky took off for 2nd. Robinson threw him out by so much that the umpire didn’t even bother to give an out signal. Shea ended up walking Reese, who tried to swipe 2nd, too. Once again, Robinson fired the ball to Stirnweiss, who tagged Reese out.

Robinson contributed to New York’s 1st run-scoring rally by drawing a 2nd-inning walk off of Hal Gregg. He had struck out in the 4th, but New York scored twice to take a 3–2 lead. Joe Page came in to start the fifth inning and blanked the Dodgers the rest of the way. Robinson gave the Yankees an insurance run in the 7th inning, when he followed Billy Johnson’s triple with a long fly ball to LF Eddie Miksis. Johnson would scored after the catch with New York’s final run in a 5–2 victory.

Game 7 was Robinson’s last in pinstripes. The following February, New York would package him with young left-hander Bill Wight and Minor League Pitcher Fred Bradley in a trade that brought veteran starter Eddie Lopat from the Chicago White Sox. Pitchers Wight and Bradley were coveted by Chicago, as was Robinson, whom it saw as an improvement over their current starting catcher, Mike Tresh. Robinson played just 1 season in Chicago, a season in which the White Sox lost 101 games. He would bat .252 and was 2nd on the club with 8 HRs.

At 33, Robinson, already one of the slowest players in the league, was beginning to slow down as a hitter, too. Apparently, this did not concern the Detroit Tigers, who had traded pitcher Billy Pierce for Robinson and kicked in an extra 10,000 dollars to seal the deal. Detroit was in a win-now mode and needed a catcher with championship experience to handle its veteran pitchers. New Tigers Manager Red Rolfe, a former Yankee, probably liked Robinson’s Yankee pedigree, too.

Billy Pierce went on to win 211 major league games (208 after leaving the Tigers) and Detroit fans would bemoan the Robinson-for-Pierce trade as one of the most lopsided in franchise history. Yet Robinson did everything the Tigers could have asked in 1949. He played in more than 100 games, threw out more than 40% of the runners who had attempted to steal, batted .269 and regained his power stroke with 13 HRs and 56 RBIs. His on-base percentage was .402—a superb number for an aging catcher. Robinson worked well with the veteran pitchers and coaxed quality innings from youngsters Ted Gray and Art Houtteman. The Tigers fell short of a pennant, but they would finish 20 games over .500.

Although Robinson’s offensive production fell off in 1950, the Tigers would won 95 games and spent almost all of July and August in 1st place. A quartet of losses to Cleveland Indians and St. Louis Browns in late September doomed them to a 2nd-place finish behind the New York Yankees.

Tigers Player Photo

When Tigers fans looked back on the 1950 AL season, many focus on Robinson’s role in a loss to the Cleveland Indians on September 24th. In the 10th inning of a 1–1 game, Cleveland’s Luke Easter hit a ball to 1st base with the bases loaded. First baseman Don Kolloway touched the bag and fired home to Robinson. Because his view was blocked by Easter, Robinson did not see his teammate touch 1st and assumed a force was on at home. He did not bother to tag Tribe base-runner Bob Lemon as he slid across the plate with the deciding run.

All 3 Detroit catchers in 1950, Robinson, veteran Bob Swift and rookie Joe Ginsberg had hit below .235. Robinson’s main contribution on offense was his stellar discipline at the plate. He finished the year with 64 hits, but with 75 walks.

Enemy pitchers weren’t so kind in 1951. They would challenge Robinson more and he literally hit his weight-.205. The Tigers would waive him in early August and then the Boston Red Sox would claim him. He finished the year as part of an ineffective catching jumble that included Buddy Rosar, Les Moss, Mike Guerra, Al Evans, Sammy White and Matt Batts.

Robinson had failed to catch on with a big-league club the following spring. He took a job with the AAA Portland Beavers of the Pacific Coast League and played there for 2 years. In 1954, he would head across the country to play for the AAA Charleston (West Virginia) Senators, a White Sox affiliate in the American Association. Later in the season, he would join the Fayetteville (North Carolina) Highlanders of the Class B Carolina League, where he caught, coached and managed. He would returned to the Highlanders in a similar capacity in 1955, but he was replaced before the season ended.

Robinson would stayed in baseball as a Minor League coach. In his last season, 1961, he would managed the Shelby (North Carolina) Colonels, who had won the Western Carolina League title despite a losing record in the regular season.

Aaron Robinson had earned a World Series ring, some good memories, and one of baseball’s most inauspicious records. After his 2,189th and final plate appearance, for the Boston Red Sox in 1951, Robinson had not stolen a base in the big leagues. It established a record that lasted until 1965, when fellow catcher Russ Nixon bumped him from the top spot. Robinson finished his career with a .260 batting mark-better than average for catchers of his day with 61 HRs and 272 RBIs.

Aaron Robinson would died of cancer on March 9,1966 at the age of 50 in his hometown of Lancaster, South Carolina. He was survived by his 2nd wife, Eva, his mother, Jennie, his 1st wife, Myrtle and children, Sybil, Joanne, Gerald, Charles, and David.

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