"If you ask me, electric football is a metaphor for America. Always shaking, always noisy, never really knowing where it's going. Heh heh...Wait a minute...America's nothing like electric football! It's just a stupid game that doesn't even work. Get that camera off me! You heard me! Get your documentary-making butt outta here!"
— Ken Burns' Electric Football, Episode 17, "This Game Sucks" (The Critic)
"Major league baseball entered the twentieth century in trouble, beset by declining attendance, rowdyism, unhappy players, and feuding, greedy club owners, but then divided itself in two, cleaned itself up, and succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams. The World Series began, and season after season more than five million fans filled stadiums to see their heroes play, and countless millions more, who had never been lucky enough to watch them in person, followed their every move in the sports pages. [...] Between 1900 and 1910 country boys and immigrants' sons and factory workers and streetwise toughs played on thousands of teams in hundreds of leagues from Maine to California. For the first time big league scouts began to travel the countryside on the lookout for future stars. Sportswriters called them ivory hunters. It would be an era that placed a premium on pitching and speed, in which runs were assembled slowly, one base at a time. It would see one pitcher win 41 games in a single season and the hardest hitting team hit just 16 home runs." (KB)
The dead ball era:
"The idea of going to the ballpark, say in 1900, was that the urban masses would get a taste of country pastoral air, that their lungs would expand by cheering, and nonsense like this. Baseball grew in the cities. It is an outgrowth of gambling, it's an outgrowth of crookedness, it's an outgrowth of drinking. It's a roistering, boisterous event. It is as wild as the Wild West."1897; Debut of George Edward "Rube" Waddell, who "may have been the strangest man ever to play in the big leagues. A farmer's son from Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, he possessed a fastball fearsome enough, and a curve wicked enough, to lead the American League in strikeouts for six straight years, and to outpitch Cy Young for 20 innings. But it was his personality that most people remembered. He poured ice water on his arm before he pitched, because, he said, otherwise he'd burn up the catcher's glove. And when he won a game he sometimes turned cartwheels on the mound. He drank too much; the Sporting News called him the 'sousepaw'. And he couldn't quite remember how many women he'd married. Between seasons Waddell wrestled alligators, and toured in a vaudeville melodrama. On the field his attention tended to wander; opponents could break his concentration by holding up puppies or bright shiny toys. He loved fires, and when a fire bell clanged he had to be restrained from leaving the game to chase the fire engine. Exasperated teammates and opposing players never knew what he'd do next, but fans loved him."
— John Thorn
What's the matter with these National League magnates? What a shame it is that the greatest of sports should be in the hands of such a malodorous gang as these magnates have proven themselves to be on more than one occasion. League meetings are characterized by mudslinging, brawling, corruption, breaches of confidence, dishonorable conspiracies and threats of personal violence.
— Sporting News, 1899
"Players like Waddell, with their drinking, with their bad acting, with their inability to take their profession seriously, they came to baseball in its early years in very large numbers because baseball, though popular, was outside social norms. The instability of a career where you might work for a year or two and then be gone, the jumping from team to team, seemed to be suited toward individuals who couldn't fit as well in the rest of society. Now, it helped, in the case of Rube Waddell and many of these other sociopathic figures, that in addition to being sociopaths they also had incredibly strong arms or very good batting eyes."
— Daniel Okrent
"One of the crosses that Connie Mack had to bear was Rube Waddell of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. When he went to sign Rube to his first contract he was met at the station in Punxsutawney by all the town leaders as he and Rube were about to get on the train, and Mack was terrified that they had come to tell Rube not to sign for so little money or that they wanted to keep him for the local team. One of them stepped forward and said, 'Mr Mack, we're here to thank you for getting him off of our hands.'"
— Daniel Okrent
Sunday would come and the little park would be packed way before game time, everybody wanting to see the great Rube Waddell pitch. Nowhere to be found! Manager'd be having a fit. And then just a few minutes before the game time there'd be a commotion in the grandstand — you'd hear people laughing and yelling, "Here comes Rube! Here comes Rube!" And there he'd come right through the stands. He'd jump down onto the field, cut across the infield to the clubhouse, taking off his shirt as he went, and in about three minutes — he never wore any underwear — he'd run back out in uniform and yell, "All right let's get 'em!"
— Sam Crawford
"He began that year (1903) sleeping in a firehouse in Camden, New Jersey, and ended it tending bar in a saloon in Wheeling, West Virginia. In between those events he won 22 games for the Philadelphia Athletics, played left end for the Business Men's Rugby Football Club of Grand Rapids, Michigan, toured the nation in a melodrama called The Stain of Guilt, courted, married and became separated from May Wynne Skinner of Lynn, Massachusetts, saved a woman from drowning, accidentally shot a friend through the hand, and was bitten by a lion."
— Lee Allen
"In 1904 Waddell struck out 349 batters, a record for American League lefthanders that still stands. But he was just too hard to handle. Although he was one of the greatest pitchers in baseball, his unreliability infuriated his teammates, and he was driven out of the big leagues and then out of the minors. Waddell contracted tuberculosis helping victims of a flood and died on April 1, 1914, at the age of 37." — KB
"At the turn of the century, major league veterans often refused even to speak to new players. Once, early in his career, a shy young outfielder dared compliment a New York Giant for hitting a home run. 'Nice hit,' he said. The veteran answered, 'Go to hell.' The young player was Johannes Peter Wagner — Honus Wagner — on his way to becoming the greatest player in the National League."
1900; Honus Wagner debuts with the Pittsburgh Pirates; remains a Pirate for 18 years, hits over .300 15 seasons in a row, steals 722 bases, and sets league records for at-bats and number of games played that stand for four decades. "He had a powerful build. His five foot eleven inch two hundred pound frame, it was said, featured a massive chest that might have come from a barrel-maker's shop, and shoulders broad enough to serve dinner on. His legs were badly bowed, but he had huge hands and arms so long opposing players swore he could tie his shoes without bending over. Nothing seemed to get past him, and he threw so hard to first base that pebbles, scooped up as he fielded grounders, were said to arrive along with the ball."
If a man with a voice loud enough to make himself heard all over the United States should stand on top of Pike's Peak and ask, "Who is the greatest ball player?" untold millions of Americans would shout, "Wagner!"1900; Christy Mathewson, the 'Christian Gentleman', debuts with the New York Giants.
— U.S. Fullerton, American Magazine
No one ever saw anything graceful or picturesque about Wagner on the diamond. His movements have been likened to the gambols of a caracoling elephant. He's so ungainly and so bowlegged that when he runs his limbs seem to be moving in a circle after the fashion of a propeller. But he could run like the wind.
— New York American
And it turned out that ol' Honus was the best third baseman in the league. He was also the best first baseman, the best second baseman, the best shortstop and the best outfielder. That was in fielding. And since he lead the league in batting 8 times between 1900 and 1911, you know that he was the best hitter too. As well as the best baserunner.
— Tommy Leach
Matty was without a peer. He had a greater variety of stuff than any pitcher I ever knew or handled. His fastball was the equal of Walter Johnson's, or Amos Rusie's. He had the fadeaway down to perfection, and he used his knowledge of batsmen to greater effect than any twirler in the game. He possessed wonderful control, remarkable fielding ability, and was one of the finest sportsmen the game has ever known.1900; Byron Bancroft "Ban" Johnson, who had taken over a struggling minor league circuit called the Western League in 1894 and made it a financial success, changes the name to the American League and begins to talk of moving East, to challenge the big city monopoly of Albert Goodwill Spalding's troubled National League. "He promised honest baseball, cheaper ticket prices, and a wholesome, family atmosphere."
— John McGraw
Mathewson was the greatest pitcher who ever lived. It was wonderful to watch him pitch, when he wasn't pitching against you.
— Connie Mack
"He took a scientific approach to his work, carefully cataloging his pitches. His fastball could arrive with an inward, an outward, or an upward shoot, he once explained. He also threw a slowball, a drop curve, an out curve, a rise ball, a spitball, and the fallaway, what pitchers later called the screwball." — KB
The fallaway, which I have used, if I may be pardoned for saying so, with greater effectiveness than any other pitcher, is an exceptionally slow ball and calculated to deceive the greatest batter. As it rushes toward him it looks like a fast high ball. Six feet from him when it begins to drop it has the appearance of a slow drop ball. And then as he swings, it is traveling in two directions at once.
— Christy Mathewson
"Christy Mathewson was Frank Merriwell in the flesh. He was so virtuous he would not give interviews to sportswriters who he heard cheated on their wives."
— Studs Terkel
"Small boys had admired other players. They worshipped Christy Mathewson. He was the perfect hero for his age. He seemed to have sprung from the pages of the dime baseball novels American boys now devoured. Sportswriters and fans across the country called him the Christian Gentleman. No one did more to improve the reputation of the baseball player, and he did it with style." — KB
If we had waited for the National League to do something for us, we would have remained a minor league forever. The American League will be the principal organization of the country within a very short time. Mark my prediction.1901; The American League declares itself a major league. Spalding balks.
— Ban Johnson, Feb 1901
Ban Johnson never missed an opportunity to make a speech. It was always the same speech, all about how he, singlehanded and alone, had made baseball a gentleman's sport, and it must be kept forever clean because sportsmanship spoke from the heart of America, and he would lay down his life to save our beloved nation. At which he would begin to cry.
— Baseball Digest
"By the end of the 1902 season even Spalding's Guide to Baseball admitted that the American League has more star players and can furnish a better article of baseball than the National League." — KB1901; Hot dogs are introduced to the ballpark at a New York Giants game by concessionaire Harry M Stevens.
1902; John McGraw, who had jumped to the new AL club in Baltimore the previous year, is suspended by Ban Johnson for abusing an umpire. In retaliation McGraw quits the AL midseason to become player-manager of the NL New York Giants, where he would stay for thirty years.
It was an important part of McGraw's great capacity for leadership that he would take kids out of the coal mines and out of the wheat fields and make them walk and talk and chatter and play ball with the look of eagles.1902; Andrew "Rube" Foster debuts with the Negro league Chicago Union Giants at pitcher; the nickname he earned by defeating, in his rookie year, the great Rube Waddell. "John McGraw himself quietly hired Foster to show the New York Giant pitching staff what he knew. Christy Mathewson is said to have learned to throw his celebrated fadeaway from Rube Foster." In 1920 Foster would organize the Negro National League.
— Heywood Broun
You couldn't come around and second guess McGraw's players in his presence without having a fight on your hands. He stood up for us at all times. We always called him Mr McGraw, never John or Mac, always Mr McGraw.
— Chief Meyers
McGraw's very walk across the field in a hostile town was a challenge to the multitude, and the ferocity of McGraw's teams aroused such resentment on the road that he routinely demanded police protection against irate fans.
— Grantland Rice
"He was profane, pugnacious, unrelenting. No one made a move on the field without his consent. McGraw was said once to have fined a player for hitting a home run, that drove in two runs, because he had ordered him to bunt."
— KB
The main idea is to win. — John McGraw
Baseball is the most popular sport in this country. In every hamlet, town and city may be the future Rube Fosters. Romping over corner lots, batting, pitching, and learning how to play the game. Organize your team!1903; National League owners sue for peace and formally recognize the American League; thus established are two, separate but equal, major leagues, both retaining the Reserve Clause and neither admitting representation for the players.
— W. E. B. Du Bois
October 1, 1903; First game of the first World Series, NL Pittsburgh Pirates v. AL Boston Pilgrims/Americans (predecessor to the Red Sox). Cy Young starts Game One for Boston. Honus Wagner's Pirates lose the series 5-3.
That was probably the wildest series ever played. Arguing all the time between the teams, between the players and the umpires, and especially between the players and the fans. That's the truth. The fans were part of the game in those days. They'd pour right out onto the field and argue with the players and the umpires. It was sorta hard to keep the game going sometimes, to say the least. [...] I think those Boston fans actually won that series for the Pilgrims. We beat them three out of the first four games, and then they'd start singing that damn Tessie song. You could hardly play ball they were singing Tessie so damn loud. Only instead of singing "Tessie, I love you madly", they'd sing special lyrics, like when Honus Wagner came to bat they'd sing, "Honus, why do you hit so badly?" Sort of got on your nerves after a while, and before we knew what had happened we'd lost the series.1904; Upon winning the NL pennant, John McGraw "took an especially sweet revenge on Ban Johnson. Rather than have anything to do with the league that had suspended him, he simply refused to play the Boston Pilgrims for the championship. There was no World Series in 1904."
— Tommy Leach
1905; The Abner Doubleday myth. "Spalding was determined to prove that baseball was an exclusively American invention, the brainchild of some ingenious American lad. He appointed a commission to prove it, but two years of research turned up almost nothing. Then, in 1905, a letter arrived from a frail old man who claimed that General Abner Doubleday had invented baseball as boy in Cooperstown, New York, one afternoon in 1839. It wasn't true. But it was just what Spalding had been looking for. It proved, he said, that baseball truly was the national game. Played by Americans, watched by Americans, now invented by an American."
"We need Doubleday because as a culture we have to have origin myths. Baseball has no point of origin; it evolved, we know that. So they set up a commission, and they ginned up this absurd story about Abner Doubleday, who, as one writer said, probably didn't know a baseball from a kumquat, but he did fire the first responsive Union volley at Fort Sumter and he did briefly command the troops at Gettysburg, so to have an American hero as the originator of the game seemed very appropriate indeed. It's total mythology. In fact there is no single point of origin."1905; Ty Cobb debuts with the AL Detroit Tigers. "He liked sentimentality in his opponents because he had none himself. Baseball, he said, is something like a war."
— Stephen Jay Gould
"Let's not try to find a starting place for baseball. Let's consider it to be the Darwinian product of centuries of movement of people and continents and oceans and something rising from the sea and turning eventually after years of evolution into Barry Bonds."
— Daniel Okrent
All across the country fans began to argue: Who was better? Cobb or the great Honus Wagner?1905 World Series; Christy Mathewson, who had won 31 games that season, "easily deceived the hitters on the [Philadelphia] Athletics in the series, pitching a record three shutouts in six days. Twenty-seven innings and not a single run; the greatest pitching performance in World Series history."
The greatest ball player of all time? I'd pick the Detroit man. Because he is, in my judgment, the most expert man of his profession, and is able to respond better than any other ballplayer to any demand made upon him. He plays ball with his whole anatomy, his head, his arms, his hands, his legs, his feet. I have never seen a man who had his heart more centered in the sport than Cobb has when he's playing. I believe Cobb would continue to play ball if he were charged something for the privilege, and if the only spectator were the groundskeeper.
— Charles Comiskey
Baseball is a redblooded sport for redblooded men. It's no pink tea, and mollycoddles had better stay out. It's a struggle for supremacy, a survival of the fittest.
— Ty Cobb
"Ty Cobb is one of the great natural forces of baseball. He is testament to how far you can get simply through will. I don't think Ty Cobb had tremendous tremendous natural ability, I don't think he would be a great athlete today. But his intensity, his drive was unparalleled. Cobb was pursued by demons from his childhood, from his parentage, from his racial consciousness, and he took out all of his aggressions on the playing field. Everyone was his enemy. It was easy for Cobb to play the game of baseball as if it were the game of life, and it was a violent struggle every day, 154 games a year."
— John Thorn
My father had his head blown off when I was eighteen years old by a member of my own family [his mother]. I didn't get over that. I've never gotten over it.
— Ty Cobb
Every rookie gets a little hazing but most of them just take it and laugh. Cobb took it the wrong way. He came up with an antagonist attitude which, in his mind, turned any little razzing into a life and death struggle. He always figured everybody was ganging up on him. He came up from the South and he was still fighting the Civil War. As far as he was concerned, we were all damn Yankees before he even met us.
— Sam Crawford
Sure I fought. I had to fight all my life to survive. They were all against me. Tried every dirty trick to cut me down, but I beat the bastards and left 'em in the ditch.
— Ty Cobb
"A man of such fierce determination to play that one time, in an exhibition game in Toledo, Ohio — he had tonsillitis — he went and had his tonsils out by a quack, who was later sent to an insane asylum, without anesthetics. Played later that day."
— George Will
"He developed ulcers, took to sleeping with a revolver under his pillow, and soon began to display an obsessive animosity toward blacks. One day when a black groundskeeper tried to shake his hand Cobb slapped him, chased him into the dugout, then tried to strangle the man's wife when she came to his aid. And when Cobb's teammates pulled him off her, he tried to punch them too."
— KB
If I hadn't been determined to outdo the other fella at all costs, I doubt I would've hit .320. In other words, my lifetime batting average has been increased at least fifty points by qualities I'd call purely mental.
— Ty Cobb
The cruelty of Cobb's style fascinated the multitudes, but it also alienated them. He played in a climate of hostility, friendless by choice in a violent world he populated with enemies. He was the strangest of all our sports idols. But not even his disagreeable character could destroy the image of his greatness as a ballplayer. Ty Cobb was the best. That seemed to be all he wanted.
— Jimmy Cannon
1906; John Henry "Pop" Lloyd debuts with the Negro league Cuban X-Giants at shortstop. Called by his fans the "black Honus Wagner", the authentic Wagner said he was honored by the comparison.
"The 1906 Chicago Cubs are believed by many to have been the best team in baseball history. They moved smoothly to the pennant that year, winning 116 games and losing just 36. One key to the Cubs consistency was their infield, the celebrated double play combination of Tinker to Evers to Chance. Chicago fans loved them but they did not much like each other, or anyone else for that matter. First baseman and manager Frank Chance, once called the greatest amateur brawler in the world, fined his players ten dollars if they so much as shook hands with an opposing player. Second baseman Johnny Evers was so touchy that his teammates called him the Human Crab, and he missed one entire season after suffering a nervous breakdown. Shortstop Joe Tinker was ordinarily a cheerful man, but even he refused to speak with Evers for two whole seasons after a quarrel over cab fare."
These are the saddest of possible words:1906 World Series; AL Chicago White Sox, called the "Hitless Wonders" because the team averaged just .230 and hit only 7 home runs all season, upset the heavily favored NL Chicago Cubs. "No one had counted on the superb pitching of White Sox ace, Ed Walsh, master of the spitball."
"Tinker to Evers to Chance."
Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds,
Tinker and Evers and Chance.
Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,
Making a Giant hit into a double —
Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:
"Tinker to Evers to Chance."
— Baseball's Sad Lexicon, by Franklin P Adams
Big Ed Walsh, oh brother! You talk about spitballs — I think that the ball disintegrated and got back together when the catcher got hold of it. I think when it went past the plate it was just spit going by.1907; Walter Johnson debuts with the AL Washington Senators.
— Sam Crawford
"Ball players have to be able to cope with defeat more constantly than anyone else. It isn't just that they lose four times out of six it's that they have to play again tomorrow, and if they lose tomorrow that's two in a row. In a week you can lose seven in a row. A losing streak can mount up on you so much faster than a winning streak that it's a kind of terror that grips a team. It's like the spooky music that runs under baseball."
— Thomas Boswell
On August second, 1907, I encountered the most threatening sight I ever saw on a ball field. He was only a rookie and we licked our lips as we warmed up. Evidently, manager "Pongo" Joe Cantillon had picked a rube outta the cornfields of the deepest bushes to pitch against us. He was a tall, shambling galoot, with arms so long they hung far out of his sleeves and with a sidearm delivery that looked unimpressive at first glance. One of the Tigers imitated a cow mooing and we hollered, "Get the pitchfork ready, Joe! Your hayseed's on the way back to the barn!" The first time I faced him I watched him take that easy windup, and then something went past that made me flinch. The thing just hissed with danger. We couldn't touch him. Every one of us knew we'd met the most powerful arm ever turned loose in a ballpark.1907 World Series; Chicago Cubs come back from their collapse in the previous year's series to defeat Ty Cobb and the Detroit Tigers four games to none.
— Ty Cobb
"He was a Kansas farm boy, but when he was found by the scouts for the Washington Senators he was pitching in a league in Idaho, fifteen hundred miles away. The very idea of this scout traveling out there and finding this unlikely league, and in that league finding a diamond, a true jewel like Johnson, represents to me this notion of the game's national spread and national appeal."
— Daniel Okrent
"Johnson hurled the ball so fast that one batter left the box after two swings. The umpire told him he had a third swing coming. I know, he said, and you can have the next one, it won't do me any good. Another batter simply shook his head, You can't hit what you can't see." — KB
There's only one way to time Johnson's fastball: When you see the arm start forward, swing.
— Birdie McCree
"New York writers are determined to make Christy Mathewson the best pitcher, the pitcher-hero of all time. And in that sense they tended to ignore Walter Johnson. They couldn't do this because Walter Johnson surpassed Mathewson in so many ways. If Walter Johnson were pitching for a team that had the winning percentage of Mathewson's Giants there would have been no contest."
— Shirley Povich
"But for all Johnson's skill and speed there was one hitter whom he could not seem to intimidate. A young Georgian playing for Detroit, who soon found a way to get hits off Johnson. Walter Johnson was a kindly man, the Georgian explained, and never really wanted to hurt anybody..."
...It was useless to try for more than a single off Johnson. You had to poke and try to meet the ball. If you swung you were dead. After he told me he was afraid he might kill a hitter, I used to cheat. I'd crowd the plate till I was actually sticking my toes on it, knowing he'd be so timid that he'd pitch me wide. Then with two balls and no strikes he'd ease one up to get one over. That's the Johnson pitch I hit.
— Ty Cobb
1908; Take Me Out to the Ball Game is written by vaudevillian Jack Norworth.
September 23 1908; The Merkle Boner. With the National League pennant on the line between archrivals Chicago Cubs and New York Giants, Giant Al Bridwell drives in what would have been the winning run, but baserunner Fred Merkle fails to touch second, believing the game to be over as hundreds of fans rush the field, and is subsequently forced out, ending the game in a tie. The Cubs go on to win the pennant. Merkle never lives it down.
It is criminal to say that Merkle is stupid and to blame the loss of the pennant on him. We were robbed of it, and you can't say Merkle did that.1908 World Series; Chicago Cubs defeat Ty Cobb and the Detroit Tigers a second year in a row. They have not won a World Series since.
— John McGraw
I wish I'd never gotten that hit. I wish I'd struck out instead. If I'd done that, then it would have spared Fred a lot of humiliation.
— Al Bridwell.
"I grew up in central Illinois midway between Chicago and St. Louis, and I made a historic blunder. All my friends became Cardinal fans and grew up happy and liberal, and I became a Cub fan and grew up embittered and conservative."1909 World Series; NL Pittsburgh Pirates v. AL Detroit Tigers. "For the first time, Ty Cobb would have to face his great rival and near opposite in all things, Honus Wagner."
— George Will
They met today for the first time, these Cobb and Wagner. It was an interesting study in contrasts. On the one hand was the Georgia boy, lithe and trim as a greyhound, his build speaking the athlete in every line. And on the other, the enormous, heavy-bodied German, the picture of strength and stability, without, however, any apparent suggestion of quickness or movement.Honus Wagner completely outplayed Ty Cobb, and Pittsburgh won. Cobb had led the Tigers to three consecutive World Series and lost all three. He never played in another.
— The Detroit News
