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A Game of Inches Updates, Chapters 15, 16 and 17
The nature of a book of firsts is that it is always a work in progress. Although A Game of Inches was published only last year, I have already
received and uncovered a great deal of new information. I encourage anyone who
has read the book to contact me with questions,
concerns, comments, updates, and corrections. A few simple corrections have been
made in new printings, but longer updates will have to wait for the next
edition. For now, I’ll be putting such updates to both volumes on these pages on
an ongoing basis, so check back frequently if interested.
Links to Updates to Other Chapters
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapters 4-5
Chapters 6-8
Chapter 9
Chapters 10-12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 18
Chapters 19-21
Chapters 22-26
CHAPTER 15: FANS
15.1.2 Knothole Gangs
I want to revise the first paragraph to explain that the
link between the knothole gangs and the Cardinals’ 1917 switch to community
ownership. Lee Lowenfish covers this point nicely on pages 89-90 of his new
Branch Rickey biography.
This will be added to the third paragraph, before the last
sentence: “Some ballparks were even designed with the hope of eliminating such
spectators. When Chicago opened a new ballpark in 1878, it was reported, ‘The
fence around the ground will be of planed and matched boards and painted. It
will no doubt have to be hued to prevent the small boy from cutting a peep-hole,
as he would be sure to do if left to his own wicked devices’ (Chicago Tribune,
March 24, 1878, 7).”
15.1.3 Rain Checks
David Ball sent me this important note that needs to be
incorporated into the second paragraph: “The St. Louis club is the only nine in
the league which gives its patrons the right to see a full game or no pay. In
Chicago and other cities, after the first inning is interrupted by the rain the
spectators are supposed to have received their money’s worth. In St. Louis
‘rain checks’ are issued in such cases. Last Saturday rain is said to have cost
the St. Louis club $150, the Chicagos demanding pay for everyone thus admitted
on checks.” (Chicago Times, July 8, 1877)
15.2.1 Partisanship
To the end of the entry I want to add something along these
lines: “The expectation of nonpartisanship gradually faded, but it took a long
time for it to entirely disappear. An 1896 writer, for example, lectured: ‘The
members of the St. Hyacinthe team were much pleased at the generous treatment
they received from the grand stand in the matter of applause when they made a
good play. This is only fair to both sides and shows a commendable desire on
the part of the audience to appreciate good playing, no matter which side it
comes from. We hope that impartial applause will be a feature of every game
played on the home grounds this season’ (Malone (N.Y.) Gazette,
June 5, 1896).”
15.2.4 Booing
This could be added to the end of the first paragraph: “In September he again
expressed outrage that Washington spectators ‘were guilty of the low vulgarity
of hissing the umpire where the decisions did not suit their partisan
prejudices’ (Ball Player’s Chronicle, September 26, 1867, 6).” If I do,
I’ll start the next paragraph with “Nonetheless.”
Another example that could be included in the final
paragraph: “The crowd to-day hooted [Dory] Dean and filled the air with quacking
in the ninth inning.” (St. Louis Globe-Democrat, August 4, 1876, 8)
Quacking??!!
15.2.7 Brooms
I’ll replace the second sentence of the third paragraph
with the following: “In 1880, after the White Stockings of Chicago reeled off a
historic twenty-one straight victories, Worcester secretary Frank Bancroft
presented Chicago captain Anson with a scarf-pin featuring ‘a broom in
miniature, crossed by a bat, a ball and the word “Chicago” on a scroll, --
emblematic of the ball-player who sweeps everything before him, and whose team
has “clean out” the cream of the League’ (Chicago Tribune, June 20, 1880,
7) The aptness of the symbolism prompted Chicago club president William Hulbert
to present the players with ‘gold “broom” badges, emblematic of their ability to
sweep everything before them’ (New York Clipper, July 31, 1880;
“Dalrymple, Old Star, Recalls Baseball in ‘80s,” Chicago Tribune,
September 23, 1928, A7).”
15.3.5 Sushi
Bob Timmermann let me know that, although San Diego was the
first major league park to offer sushi, the Hawai’i Islanders of the Pacific
Coast League served sushi in their park years before the Padres began doing so.
CHAPTER 16: MARKETING AND PROMOTIONS
16.1.1 Schedules
I should note that the pocket schedules came remarkably
quickly after the schedule itself, and add a cross-reference to entry 22.1.4,
where the 1887 introduction of the schedule is noted.
Here’s another 1879 example: “Wright, Howland & Mahn,
dealers in base ball goods, 30 Kneeland Street, Boston, have flooded the country
with their business cards, on the reverse side of which is printed the schedule
of league games for 1879 – a judicious piece of advertising, which will
doubtless pay well.” (St. Louis Globe-Democrat, April 13, 1879, 13)
16.1.2 Advertising Campaigns
This could be added as an example to the first paragraph:
“W. B. Pettit, of the Occidental hotel, has kindly consented to fly a flag from
the staff on his hotel on days when there is a game. Many of the clubs coming
here will stop at his house, it being the ball tossers’ headquarters.” (Indianapolis
Sentinel, April 1, 1877) Incidentally, Pettit became the team president the
following year.
This will go after the first paragraph: “These were
terribly effective, and could backfire if not executed properly. An Evansville
sportswriter justifiably grumbled in 1884, ‘The base ball streamers on the
street cars are rapidly losing their value as advertisements of the game,
because of the neglect of those who should see to having them put on and taken
off the cars according to circumstances. Yesterday there was no game, and yet
the cars throughout the day advertised a game for the afternoon. To-day there
will be a game, and those who were deceived by the streamers yesterday cannot be
expected to pay any attention to them to-day or hereafter. Either the streamers
should be removed permanently or they should be brought into use only when a
game is to be played’ (Evansville Journal, July 9, 1884). And
advertising
for a tournament in Ionia, Michigan, was so over-the-top that a correspondent in
the nearby town of Lyons complained, “Posters and bills announcing and giving
the programme of the tournament are scattered about town in such profusion as to
give one an idea that it is to be the grandest and most important event of the
century, and that little villages were made for the sole purpose of proclaiming
and making known to the public’
(Ionia Sentinel, July 23, 1875,
Lyons correspondent).”
16.1.3 Public Relations Director
Lee Lowenfish has some interesting information on Karst on
pages 207-208 of his new Branch Rickey biography. I plan to use this
information to expand the first sentence of the final paragraph and to add a new
one on how and why Karst was hired.
16.1.4 Days
Here’s how I plan to revise the second paragraph: “In 1914,
owner Charles Weeghman of the Chicago entry in the new Federal League courted
fans with an array of days that honored specific groups (Stuart Shea, Wrigley
Field, 53-55). The established major leagues responded in 1915 with such
events as Boosters Day, Flag Day, Newsboy Day, and Schoolchildren’s Day
(Jonathan Fraser Light, The Cultural Encyclopedia of Baseball, 593). But
this practice fell out of favor after the demise of the Federal League.” Then
the third paragraph will begin: “It was revived …”
16.1.6 Bat Days
This will be added after the first sentence: “Chicago
Federal League owner Charles Weeghman gave out thousands of team caps when the
club debuted in 1914, but this appears to have been a solitary exception. By
contrast, as Stuart Shea has noted, the Yankees refused for many year to license
their caps again, believing that allowing nonplayers to wear them would cheapen
the logo (Stuart Shea, Wrigley Field, 50).” Then what is now the second
sentence of the first paragraph will be moved to the start of the next one.
16.1.7 Ladies’ Days
A cute addition to the end of the seventh paragraph:
“Indeed, as early as 1883 there was already a debate about who invented Ladies’
Day (National Police Gazette, September 15, 1883).”
To the last paragraph I need to add that the National
League banned the practice in 1909, and that the Cubs tried unsuccessfully to
repeal the ban in 1914 (Stuart Shea, Wrigley Field, 39-40).
16.1.8 Name-the-Team Contest
I may add this additional information about the 1905
contest in Washington: “Some included lengthy justifications of their choices.
A proponent of the name Hornets who obviously had a lot of time on his hands
explained that ‘All the letters in the word “Hornets,” except “H,” are found in
“Senators,” with the addition of “as.” This is significant, as it gives us
“Has.” But the “Hornet” is a bee without an “N.” Therefore, we will expect to
have lively bees this year instead of “has beens”’ (Washington Times,
March 2, 1905, 8).”
W. Harrison Daniel and Scott P. Mayer’s Baseball in
Richmond, page 52, notes that Richmond held one in 1906, the year after the
one in Washington.
16.2.2 Code of Conduct
After the words “declining attendance” in the third
paragraph, I plan to replace the rest of the paragraph with a period and the
following:
“But the way the idea was implemented turned off potential
supporters. As one unidentified player explained, ‘We are not refusing to sign
because we object to a rule forbidding the use of indecent language on the ball
field. The sense of the rule is all right, but its passage and the hullabaloo
Brush made about it reflected on every ball player in the League. There was
nothing for the public to think but that we were a foul-mouthed lot. There are
men of that calibre in base ball as there are in every profession, but they are
exceptions to the general run of players, and could have been suppresses if the
umpires, managers and League presidents did their plain duty under the old
rules. … Base ball is a clean, gentlemanly game, and Mr. Brush has done it more
harm than good by the hurrah he has excited over his resolution’ (Sporting
Life, April 23, 1898, 1, the ballplayer was identified only as a college man
on Browns). Press members also found the measure too harsh, suggesting that the
owners ‘could readily have suppressed single-handed the evils complained of …
without publicly pillorying ball players as a class of unclean and obscene
ruffians’ (Sporting Life, April 16, 1898, 4).
“The biggest problem was that the proposed penalties were far too
harsh. Even Giants owner Andrew Freedman condemned the draconian punishments,
adding ‘I do not think that the using of obscene language on the ball field is
nearly as bad as it has been pictured’ (Oklahoma City Daily Oklahoman,
February 18, 1898). As a result, before the new season had even opened, the
Brush resolution had come to be regarded as ‘a dead letter’ (Sporting News,
March 25, 1899, 4).”
16.2.4 Doubleheaders
In either the second or third paragraph, I need to mention
that a two-for-one doubleheader was staged in Worcester (then a National League
city) on September 25, 1882. But as Troy Soos explains in Before the Curse,
page 57, it was a desperation move by a franchise that disbanded at the end of
the season.
16.2.6 World Series
This example will be added to the end of paragraph four to
illustrate my point: “Tim Murnane, for instance, pointed out that the concept of
such a series was a dubious one and referred to the contests as ‘but exhibition
games’ (Boston Globe, September 6 and August 23, 1906).”
16.2.7 Keeping Balls in Stands
Another example to include in the eighth paragraph: “In
1907, Boston (National League) manager Fred Tenney reportedly was offered a
bonus if the club made a profit and tried to secure it by going into the stands
to retrieve foul balls (Troy Soos, Before the Curse, 122-123).”
I want to reword the opening sentence of the paragraph
about Charles Weeghman as follows: “The first man to wave the white flag was
former Chicago Federal League franchise owner Charles Weeghman, who bought the
Cubs after the 1915 season and brought his upstart mentality to the senior
circuit. On April 29, 1916, he announced that the team’s fans would be allowed
to keep balls hit into the stands.”
In the last paragraph, this will be inserted prior to the
final sentence: “The Negro Leagues continued to do everything possible to keep
balls in play, including using the old tactic of allowing free admission to any
child who retrieved a ball hit out of the stadium (Donn Rogosin, Invisible
Men, 72-73). Negro League owner Abe Manley once even sent a note to one of
his players in the middle of an at bat threatening to fine him the cost of the
lost baseballs if he fouled off any more pitches (Brad Snyder, Beyond the
Shadow of the Senators, 158).”
I also intend to do more to draw attention to the important
link between this topic and entry 2.3.2 on Deliberate Fouls.
16.2.8 All-Star Games
In the last paragraph, I want to mention that the Negro League All-Star Game
also became extremely successful and probably kept a number of struggling teams
and leagues alive by provided a crucial big payday (discussed by Neil Lanctot on
page 188 of his Negro League Baseball).
16.3.1 Newspaper Coverage
An addition to the end of the sixth paragraph: “The
Herald predictably responded by dramatically reducing its coverage of the
Atlantics – and thereby being scooped when Ferguson led his team to the historic
upset that ended the long unbeaten streak of the Red Stockings of Cincinnati
(George Bulkley, “The Day the Reds Lost,” National Pastime 2 (Fall 1982),
7).”
A somewhat different version of the George Campbell matter
appears in Joseph Overfield’s “First Great Minor League Club,” Baseball
Research Journal 1977, 4. Overfield states that the lawsuit ended when
Campbell did not appear for court.
16.3.2 Telegraphs
In the third paragraph, I’m going to replace the final
sentence with: “This led to several concerns. There was at least one instance
of Western Union employees being accused of taking advantage of inside
information to wager on baseball games (St. Louis Globe-Democrat, August
4, 1876, 8). In addition, with many newspapers posting the telegraphed results
on large bulletin boards, club owners became concerned about the erosion of
their fan base.”
I’m going to replace the third paragraph from the end
(beginning “Naturally the issue”) with something like this: “But the transition
was often rocky. A bitter dispute occurred in 1897: ‘There is war to the death
between newspapers formerly served by the United Press and the Western Union
Telegraph company. The war has centered upon and is caused by the baseball
extras got out in several cities in the league by afternoon newspapers. The
Western Union has a contract with the National League whereby it has a practical
monopoly of every ground in the circuit. When the season opened the telegraph
company notified its operators to handle no stuff for papers belonging to the
United Press unless they rescinded entirely their contracts with the Postal
company and used only Western Union wires. Threats of arrest on the ground of
refusing to carry matter were made, but so far nothing has developed except that
the reporters have been put to great trouble to get their matter to their
papers. The papers most interested have set up the claim that the telegraph
company is a common carrier and subject to a suit for damages’ (“See Baseball
Through a Telegraph,” Chicago Tribune, May 11, 1897, 4).
“The turmoil continued in 1898. It appears that Western Union was
no longer paying for its privileges – or at least that the amount being made was
not enough to satisfy many of the owners. Washington owner J. Earle Wagner
ordered Western Union to remove its wires from his ballpark, explaining that he
believed ‘the company should pay a privilege the same as the score card man and
peanut vender’ (Sporting Life, April 2, 1898).” Several other National
League owners attempted ‘to bar the Western Union’s “ticker” wires from their
grounds, because they believe that if such a move is made the gate receipts will
be increased.’ But other clubs were beginning to recognize the value of such
publicity. The New York club, for instance, was unwilling ‘to entertain the
proposition, for it is believed that the “ticker” helps to boom base ball” (New
York Sun, reprinted in Sporting Life, January 8, 1898).”
16.3.4 Radio Broadcasts
This will replace the second sentence of paragraph six:
“Cubs owner William Wrigley had made effective use of advertising to sell
chewing gum and believed that more exposure could only help. In keeping with
this philosophy, instead of giving one radio station an exclusive license to
broadcast the team’s games, he allowed any station to do so. Soon as many as
five stations were sending their own announcers to call the games and all of the
exposure helped attendance (Stuart Shea, Wrigley Field, 116-117).
“But other owners were less sure that this approach would work and
it is hard to blame them. The confusion of baseball owners mirrored American
society’s deep confusion about the new medium.”
16.3.5 Television
I’ll add this new paragraph after the eighth one: “It would
seem that there was no possibility for compromise: a team had to either prohibit
broadcasts or allow them and assume that they expanded the fan base. The two
St. Louis teams, however, did find an imaginative middle ground by permitting
dull play-by-play accounts without any commentary. The Sporting News
predicted that this compromise would prove ‘mutually satisfactory to both the
fans and the magnates, for there are some announcers prone to wander far from
the actual occurrence on the field’ (William B. Mead, “The Year of the Hitters,”
National Pastime Spring 1985, 31).”
17.3 Base Hits
The date of the National Chronicle article cited in
the fifth paragraph should be January 9, 1868 (not 1869).
17.4 Batting Averages
After the second sentence of the next-to-last paragraph, I
plan to insert this new one: “Even some Tribune readers were not
appreciative of the new statistic. ‘I would like to know,’ asked one, ‘whether
several of the men have improved since last year, or whether they have fallen
off, and the only record I have of last year is in the shape of the Tribune’s
list, which gave only the average of base-hits to a game, I cannot compare that
with the table you published last Sunday, and I therefore respectfully ask you
to give an old-fashioned list. … I am sure it would oblige many persons, who,
like myself, can hardly keep up with the improvements of scoring the game.’ It
was an understandable request and Meacham provided the requested information,
thought perhaps with gritted teeth (Chicago Tribune, November 5, 1876, 10).”
What are now the last two sentences of the next-to-last paragraph will become a
new one.
At the end of the fifth paragraph or the start of the next
one, I will mention that Boston and Cleveland issued statistics in which batting
average was computed on the basis of hits per at bats in 1871 (Ralph E. LinWeber,
“Baseball Guides Galore,” Baseball Research Journal 1982, 61).
17.5 Earned Run Averages
In the second paragraph, I’ll add this new sentence after
the first one: “At the end of the 1876 season, the Chicago Tribune
published a list of pitchers in order of earned runs allowed per game (Chicago
Tribune, November 5, 1876, 10).”
17.7 Runs Batted In
After the third sentence of the final paragraph, I will
add: “Researcher Reed Howard’s examination of 1891 box scores in Sporting
Life and Sporting News confirms that runs batted in appeared in some
early season box scores but the statistic was soon dropped.”
17.10 Walks
Before the last sentence I plan to add: “In 1899 Washington
co-owner J. Earl Wagner expressed the opinion that ‘a record should be kept of
the number of bases on balls worked by each player. I suppose McGraw of
Baltimore has walked oftener than any batsman in the league to date. Working
pitchers for free passes is one of the nerviest and brainiest devices in team
work at the bat, and these achievements in securing dead-head passages to the
base should be featured in the records (Denver Evening Post, July 28,
1899).”
17.24 Individual Statistics Emphasized
I’ll add this at the end: “Washington co-owner J. Earl
Wagner maintained that one National League player ‘keeps double entry books on
his batting, and doesn’t care whether his team wins of loses just so long as he
manages to squeeze in a hit or two each game (Denver Evening Post, July
28, 1899).”
17.26 Streaks
In the third paragraph, I want to also cite National
Leaguer Charles “Chief” Zimmer among the catchers whose streaks attracted
considerable attraction. |
