The Hardball Times

Best of the decade: The 19th century

by Richard Barbieri
January 10, 2013

Last year, as you no doubt recall, I spent a column each month reviewing the best players born in each month. Seeing how much I enjoyed the format, I am continuing that in 2013. Having done birthdays, 2013 will see a creation of the best players from each decade. At the end of the year, of course we will compare the teams and see which decade can lay claim to the best team. (Or so one might argue; we’ll cover that come December.)

Before we begin each decade though, we’ll start with a team constructed from the pre-1900 period of baseball. Owing to the profound differences between this era and the “modern” history of baseball—to say nothing of erratic record keeping and wildly erratic levels of competition—this team will not be considered in the final comparison across eras, but is nonetheless worth examining.

Now, the rules: to qualify for any non-pitching position, a player must have played at least 500 games there during his career—though not necessarily during the decade in question. This replaces my riotously unpopular “50 percent of games played” requirement from the All-Month team series. For starting pitchers, it requires at least 200 starts in a given decade. We’ll cover relievers later in the essay. And getting this question out of the way early, yes, a man can qualify for a position on two different All-Decade teams.

With all that out of the way, let’s begin:

Catcher: Buck Ewing

According to Wikipedia, Ewing is “widely regarded as the best catcher of his era,” and that’s good enough for me! Actually, Ewing’s numbers speak more to his quality than any crowd-sourced encyclopedia could. Playing from 1880 through to 1897—for the likes of the Troy Trojans and New York Giants—Ewing was a lifetime .303 hitter and slugged nearly 500 extra base hits in his career. Even better regarded than his performance at the plate were Ewing’s abilities behind it: he was the finest defensive catcher of his era, and ahead of his competition by an enormous margin.

First Base/Manager: Cap Anson

Anson is one of the finest pre-1900 players to take the field, arguably the greatest ever. A longtime member of the Chicago Cubs franchise—though they were known primarily as the “White Stockings” in Anson’s day—he was the first player to record 3,000 hits, a career .334 hitter and is the nineteenth century leader in hits, doubles, runs and RBI. For good measure, Anson was also the manager for most of his Cubs franchise tenure, during which he won nearly 1,300 games and five National League pennants, which is enough to secure him the skipper’s spot on this team.

(On the downside, no honest profile of Anson can be written without noting that he was a virulent racist, the kind who made Ty Cobb look like Branch Rickey when it came to race relations in baseball. Anson repeatedly refused play against any team fielding black players and was one of the leading figures responsible for the racial segregation of the game.)

Second Base: Cupid Childs

This is a close-run thing between Childs and Bid McPhee. McPhee was a brilliant defensive second baseman—Bill James lists him as worthy of nine Gold Gloves in the pre-1900 period. Childs was not quite the brilliant glove of McPhee, but was a brilliant hitter, and despite a career nearly 700 games shorter than McPhee, earned more value at the plate.

Childs played primarily in strong offense eras, so his numbers must be taken with a small grain of salt. Nonetheless, even when normalized to a reasonable level and adjusted for season-length, Childs comes out very favorably.

(The nickname, incidentally, is much argued over by the kind of people who argue over such things. Our own Bruce Markusen covered the debate this column and I leave it to him to sort things out.)

Third Base: Deacon White

White is receiving a (very small) revival in his career having been selected for Hall of Fame induction this coming year by the Veterans Committee owing, one assumes, to his performance on his field rather than his outstanding mustache. White was indeed an excellent player, twice a batting champion (1875, .367 and 1877, .387) and thrice the league-leader in RBI. That being said, if we’re honest, White earns this position more for having played his career entirely in the nineteenth century while some rough contemporaries—John McGraw, Lave Cross and others—crossed into the twentieth.

White is also credited with being the innovator of catchers squatting directly behind the batter—though it would not catch on widely for several years—and upon being sold from one team to another famously told a reporter that “no man is going to sell my carcass unless I get half.”

Shortstop: Jack Glasscock

Teams in the 1800s, it seems, sure loved to name themselves after colors. Over the course of his career, Glasscock played for, variously, the Blues (Cleveland), Maroons (St. Louis), Reds (Cincinnati) and Browns (St. Louis). That’s a good chunk of the color wheel right there. For good measure, he was also a Giant, Colonel, Senator, Hoosier and Pirate. And while we’re on the subject of odd names, Glasscock’s nickname was “Pebbly Jack,” supposedly owing to his dedication to clearing the area around shortstop of pebbles. I don’t know, I just write the column.

The league’s leading hitter of 1890, and owner of more than 2,000 career hits, Glasscock’s endless tidying of his position did him well; per Bill James he was worthy of NL’s Gold Glove at shortstop four times over his career.

Left Field: Ed Delahanty

A brilliant player, Delahanty debuted at age 20 for the Philadelphia Quakers in 1888 and by 1892 had established himself as a genuine star. In the pre-1900 period, Delahanty played just over 1400 games, and accumulated nearly 2000 hits, nearly 400 doubles while putting up a collective .345/.410/.505 line, including the 1899 batting title.

In 1903, at age 35, Delahanty was still an excellent player when—in what remains one of baseball’s strangest deaths despite having taken place more than 100 years ago—he was ejected from a train near Niagara Falls, evidently for being drunk. Whether in drunken pursuit of the train, or simply from disorientation, Delahanty attempted to cross the International Railway Bridge over the Niagara River. This was a very poor decision and his body was found the next day by the operator of the Maid of the Mist tour boat.

Center Field: Billy Hamilton

As great players go, Billy Hamilton is one of the most obscure in baseball history. To this day, Hamilton remains the all-time leader for runs scored in a single season with 198—no one in history is within 20 of that. Despite playing in fewer than 1,600 games, Hamilton scored nearly 1,700 runs, just out of the top 25 all-time. Of course, his runs per game number is even more impressive, no player with a similar number of games comes with 200 runs of Hamilton’s total.

As you might expect for someone who scored runs at that rate, Hamilton was a speedy guy; he led the NL in stolen bases five times, stealing 96 or more six times. He also led the league in walks five times and was the game’s first dominant leadoff hitter.

Right Field: King Kelly

According to Bill James, to tell “the true story of Mike [King] Kelly is impossible, and even to summarize all of the legends would require at least three books.” As such, I’ll focus on Kelly’s career on the field, in numbers, which includes two seasons leading the National League in hitting (1884 and ’86), three straight years leading the league in runs scored and three times in doubles. At the time of his retirement, only nine men—including teammates Anson, Glasscock, Ewing and White—had more WAR.

Starting Pitchers: Kid Nichols, Cy Young, Tim Keefe, John Clarkson, Pud Galvin

Kid Nichols currently ranks seventh in the Baseball-Reference Fan EloRater and was ranked by Bill James as the ninth best pitcher of all-time. Nonetheless, he is fundamentally unknown by casual fans, having won 297 of his 361 games prior to 1900. Nichols’ huge win totals are a reflection of the age in which he pitched of course—as are his ridiculous inning totals, averaging exactly 400 over the course of his career. He was also a great pitcher beyond the wins though, finishing his career with a 140 ERA+, and leading the league in pitching WAR four times in the 1880s.

You all know about Cy Young, 511 wins including his ridiculous 1892-93 seasons when he won a total of 70 games with a 156 ERA+ while pitching 875 total innings. Unlike Young, who pitched more-or-less forever, Tim Keefe—known as both Smiling Tim and Sir Timothy—pitched just 14 seasons and three of those were 230 innings or less. When on the mound, though, Keefe was brilliant, leading the league in ERA three times.

I’ve written extensively about John Clarkson in this column, so here’s the quick version: debuted at 20, won 53 games in 1885, was out of baseball after the 1894 season, ran a cigar store until he suffered a nervous breakdown and died young in a Massachusetts mental hospital. Pud Galvin was just 18 when he made his debut in 1875 and by the time he was 27, he had won more than 200 games, including 92 in 1883-84. The 1884 season was, by WAR, the greatest pitching season in history: 19 WAR, 46 wins, 1.99 ERA (155 ERA+) and 636.1 IP. It was a different game then, but Galvin had it mastered.

Relief Pitcher: Tony Mullane

As you probably know, the relief pitcher is essentially a modern concept. Prior to 1950, there were a grand total of 29 seasons in which a pitcher appeared in relief 50 or more times. In 2012 alone, 134 pitchers appeared in 50 or more games. This being the case, with a couple of exceptions as we move through the decades, until roughly the last 50 years of baseball history anyone selected in the reliever role is basically just a starter who is slotted into the role.

For the pre-1900 team, that’s Tony Mullane. It is true that Mullane—nicknamed “The Apollo of the Box” for his good looks—appeared in relief in just 51 games across his 13 year career. It is also true that he is not the best pitcher not to make the starting rotation.

Nonetheless, Mullane gets this spot. For one thing, though 51 games in relief across a career isn’t much of a total by modern standards, it’s actually pretty impressive for the 19th century. Moreover, he recorded 15 saves in his career, second only to Nichols for pitchers prior to 1900. In fact, Mullane led the league in saves five times—albeit three of those coming with just one or two saves in a season.



Questions, comments and thinly veiled threats can be mailed to Richard on the back of a twenty dollar bill or e-mailed to him at RichardBarbieri@yahoo.com

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