Great Pictures Of Hall Of Famers

I'll pass this along because I figure you all will like it and it's pretty neat stuff.

Summer Anne Burton, an artist from Austin, has a website called Every Hall of Famer, where she's posting her work. You can see some examples above.

I think these are just great and encourage you to stop by her site and maybe even purchase some of her work. It looks like she does requests.

Hat tip to keystone at Baseball Fever for passing along the information.

Tebeauism

While writing about the rowdyism of the late 19th century, Harold Seymour had this to say about Patsy Tebeau in Baseball: The Early Years:

One of the most notorious teams for rough stuff was Patsy Tebeau's Cleveland Spiders. President Byrne made the Spiders pay four dollars for repairs when they tore up the clubhouse after losing three straight to Brooklyn, and he charged them $1.25 for a ball Jesse Burkett threw over the fence. In a midseason game at Louisville in 1896 "Tebeauism" was at its worst. The Spiders were in rare form, ragging the umpire all day and mobbing him for calling the game on account of darkness. The fans then attacked the Spiders, who ended the day in jail. The League Board fined Tebeau $200, but President Robison, angrily denouncing the League, got an injunction to prevent both the collection of the fine and the boycotting of Cleveland by other League clubs if Tebeau played-which they had planned to do.

The Sporting News, upon Tebeau's death in 1918, wrote that Tebeau "belonged to the blood and iron brigade of baseball and was in his glory in the days when the game was not for weaklings...players of these modern days are milksops compared to the men who fought the diamond battles of the late eighties and the nineties, when Patsy was at his best. He came from the Goose Hill and Kerry Patch schools, the very names of whose graduates made umpires shudder and whose arguments were not finished with mere words and back talk." The same article went on to tell several Tebeau stories, all of which involved violence, threats of violence, and obscenities (that were represented in the article by blank spaces) directed towards umpires, fans, the opposition, and his own players.

When told that he was a rough and a rowdy and that he had "out-Baltimored" Baltimore, Tebeau replied that "I play ball as I find it played against me...Do you expect me to stand still and see them bring the hearse for me on the ground? If they do there'll be two us that will go out in it."

The New York Times had a nice Tebeau story in its August 9, 1894 issue:

Capt. Tebeau of the Cleveland Club came near being mobbed after to-day's game (in Pittsburgh). He had to wait under the grand stand until the crowd left the park. In the ninth inning, with two of the Cleveland men out, Tebeau commenced to abuse Hoagland for certain decisions, and threatened to put on the gloves with the umpire and settle it according to prize-fighting rules. The crowd was so mad at Tebeau that he had to be hustled out of reach...Tebeau was hit in the face by a young boy on his way from the grounds to the hotel in the omnibus.

What I Actually Meant To Say

I've had a long week that involved too much work, too little sleep, and probably one too many trips to the local pub. When I sat down to post yesterday, I had no clue what I was going to write about and ended up posting what seems in retrospect a relatively incoherent piece on Chippy McGarr. Oh well, not every post can be a Light In August. So let's see if I can pull it together long enough to make some sense out of all of this.

The Browns juggernaut had another successful season on the field in 1887, cruising to their third straight pennant. They were led by the outstanding pitching of Bob Caruthers, Dave Foutz, and Silver King. At the plate, Tip O'Neil had his best season, winning the triple crown and leading the AA in just about every major offensive category. Caruthers and Foutz, who played 61 and 65 games in the field respectively, were the second and third best hitters on the team.

While the Browns cruised to the pennant, their on-field success did not translate into financial success for Chris Von der Ahe. With the loss of the Pittsburgh club to the National League after the 1886 season, attendance (and revenue) was down across the AA in 1887. The lack of a competitive pennant race also had a depressing effect on attendance in St. Louis. The profitable Sunday games were threatened due to the activities of Sabbatarians who controlled the State Legislature in Missouri. The World Series versus Detroit did not generate the revenues anticipated. And as revenue was declining, Von der Ahe's expenses, in the form of player salaries, were increasing. While the Browns were certainly still a profitable operation, Von der Ahe, who relied on his baseball profits to fund his other business interests, was feeling the squeeze.

As a result of this downturn in his economic situation, Von der Ahe explored numerous options. Speculation was ripe that the Browns would follow the Alleganhys into the League (in exchange for a $25,000 bonus). Other rumours making the rounds in 1887 were that Von der Ahe would sell the Browns to Joseph Pulitzer for $100,000, move the club to New York, or buy a controlling interest in the Philadelphia Association club and transfer some of the abundant talent on the Browns to his new team in order to make the AA a more competitive venture.

While Von der Ahe certainly explored all of these options, in the end rather than take any radical steps he simply chose to cut expenses and raise revenue the "old fashioned" way-by selling his players. According to Jon David Cash, Von der Ahe "traveled to the East and traded away the rights to five valuable players from his championship team. For a total of $18,750, he sold to the Brooklyn Trolley-Dodgers the services of Albert 'Doc' Bushong and the two men who had served as a pitcher-right fielder tandem for the Browns, Dave Foutz and Bob Caruthers. In Philadelphia, Von der Ahe arranged another transaction, sending shortstop Bill Gleason and center fielder Curt Welch to the Athletics for catcher John 'Jocko' Milligan, shortstop James 'Chippy' McGarr, center fielder Fred Mann, and an additional eight thousand dollars." These transactions not only helped to address Von der Ahe's financial situation but it also strengthened Philadelphia and Brooklyn, making for a (theoretically) more competitive league.

As to Chippy McGarr and Lou Sockalexis, McGarr was born, raised, and lived in Worchester, Massachusetts, home of the College of Holy Cross. It seems that in the offseasons while McGarr was playing with Cleveland, he helped coach the Holy Cross baseball team. Sockalexis was the star athlete at Holy Cross and McGarr, recognizing his talent, pressed Cleveland manager Patsy Tebeau to sign Sockalexis. Tebeau had Jesse Burkett, another Cleveland player and Worchester native, confirm McGarr's scouting report. After Burkett also told Tebeau to sign Sockalexis, Tebeau spent almost a year trying to sign the player to a contract. After a complicated courtship that involved Sockalexis disappearing for a time and then enrolling at Notre Dame, Cleveland finally signed Sockalexis for the 1897 season.