Author: Graham Womack

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Any player/Any era: Pete Rose

What he did: Rose has the career record for hits with 4,256, as well as most games played, plate appearances, at-bats, outs and, I’m guessing, money bet on baseball. The latter feat helped get him barred for life from the game in 1989. I consider Pete Rose the greatest baseball player not in the Hall of Fame, I align myself with those who say his ban is cruel and unusual punishment, and I believe baseball should grant an amnesty to Rose and another banished great, Joe Jackson. I say enough is enough, but it’s not my decision.

Era he might have thrived in: The Deadball Era

Why: Rose’s problem is not that he got caught up in illicit activity. It’s that he played 60 years too late.

As the Ken Burns Baseball book recounts, baseball suppressed a betting scandal in 1926 involving future Hall of Famers Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker. Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis permitted both players to quietly retire (and later let them play again) while American League President Ban Johnson paid $25,000 to have information destroyed that Cobb and Speaker bet on a game of the 1919 World Series they knew to be fixed. Rose is not known to have done anything approaching this yet he’s long gone from baseball.

Gambling was endemic in baseball from 1900-1920, the height of the Deadball Era, with many players being barred for fixing games or betting on them including Heinie Zimmerman, Hal Chase and the eight Chicago White Sox players, including Jackson, who threw the 1919 World Series. But there hasn’t been anything substantiated that Rose ever threw a game. Rose finally admitted to betting on games where he was a manager, after years of lying about it, but he maintains that he always played to win. Assuming that’s true, it’s far different than conspiring with underworld figures to rig a game.

Evidence shows that Rose was a compulsive gambler, and addictive behavior can rear its head in any generation or environment. Rose may have gambled on baseball no matter the era. But in the early days, long before free agency or seven-figure contracts, Rose would have had a fraction of the money to gamble with. He also would have had baseball’s brass on his side — rather than being directly responsible for his exile — had his transgressions become public.

There are other reasons Rose would have thrived in an earlier era. His style of play always suggested he was plucked from another generation, a scrappy throwback who gave his all, earning the nickname Charlie Hustle. Rose’s gregarious, roughhouse character also would have been perfect in an era where players scarcely ranked above street criminals in the social hierarchy.

Needless to say, had Rose played in the Deadball Era, I think he’d be in the Hall of Fame.

Any player/Any era is a Thursday feature here that looks at how a ballplayer might have done in a different era than his own. The feature debuted June 3, 2010 under the name “Different player/Different era.” I’m changing the name, effective this week, because the first one is confusing.

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Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? Albert Belle

Claim to fame: Belle may be the fourth-best power hitter of the 1990s after Ken Griffey Jr., Barry Bonds and Frank Thomas. In a 12-year career from 1989-2000, Belle hit 381 home runs with a .295 batting average. He smacked at least 30 homers eight straight seasons, led the league in RBI three times and made five All Star appearances. He also did so apparently without steroids. Famously surly, Belle told a Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter last year, “I was just an angry black man.”

Current Hall of Fame eligibility: Belle appeared on the Baseball Writers Association of America ballot twice, receiving 7.7 percent of the vote in 2006 and 3.5 percent the following year, which removed him from future ballots. He will be eligible for enshrinement by the Veterans Committee in 2021.

Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? Short of Lou Whitaker receiving 2.9 percent of the Hall of Fame vote from the BBWAA his only year of eligibility, I think Belle peaking at 7.7 percent of the vote is the greatest Cooperstown injustice of the past decade. But it isn’t surprising.

Belle’s attitude may have influenced at least one voter. And historically, if a non-white player has been perceived to have character issues, he shouldn’t count on making the Hall of Fame. Just ask Dick Allen, Dave Parker, Dwight Gooden and Maury Wills. Ask Jose Canseco, who would’ve lost votes even if it never was confirmed he did steroids. Same goes for Bonds who alienated writers long before he (probably) started juicing.

Many white players with questionable characters have been enshrined, from Ty Cobb, so reviled by fellow players that only three attended his funeral, to Tris Speaker, Rogers Hornsby and Gabby Hartnett who told sportswriter Fred Lieb they were in the Ku Klux Klan. Pete Rose was barred for life for gambling in 1989, and he still received as many Hall of Fame votes in 1992 as Belle got in 2006 with 40.

I took a look at recent white inductees to the Hall of Fame, and none appear to be scumbags. Off the cuff, I couldn’t think of any recent white player denied Cooperstown for this reason. But that could have more to do with the fact that the sports media doesn’t seem to negatively label white players as often it does others.

If a minority wants to be enshrined, he’d better be as beloved as Jackie Robinson, Ozzie Smith or Kirby Puckett. And Puckett ballooned to 300 pounds, developed hypertension and died at 45, after it emerged he was, in fact, human, rather than a lovable stereotype.

Occasionally, minorities with less than glowing reputations are honored. Jim Rice, a player who clashed with the media, made it with the BBWAA on his 15th try. The Veterans Committee tabbed Orlando Cepeda, who served a drug-related prison sentence. The writers also selected one of their arch-nemeses, Eddie Murray, on his first ballot, but with 3,255 hits and 504 home runs, anything less would have been unjust. For fringe candidates, I venture character keeps a minority out of Cooperstown more often than it gets him in.

Belle is a fringe candidate. Baseball-Reference ranks him similar to two batters in Cooperstown, Ralph Kiner and Hank Greenberg, as well as another who’s destined to join them, Albert Pujols, and a few other players who could make it eventually, including Allen; Belle also rates near or above on three of the four Hall of Fame monitoring metrics listed on the site.

I ding Belle most for quitting at 34 due to injuries, like my subject here last week, Don Mattingly and for being somewhat one-dimensional, simply an amazing hitter. Belle was dominant enough in this capacity for most of his career I’d probably honor him, but I suspect I’m in the minority, to pardon the expression.

Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? is a Tuesday feature here that debuted June 1.

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Book Review: Chief Bender’s Burden

bender jacket

In January, I had a rare, wonderful day of research that any writer may know, a stretch of hours where time suspended for a great chase.

I decided not long before to write a book on Joe Marty, a ballplayer from my hometown, Sacramento. Marty came up in the Pacific Coast League with Joe DiMaggio and was considered the better prospect, though he didn’t fulfill his potential. He played in the majors from 1937 to 1941, then went to World War II and played the rest of his career with Sacramento in the PCL.

One day in January, through hours and hours of research online, I verified four of Marty’s big league teammates were still living, all in their nineties. One man died a couple weeks later, but of the remaining three, I have since interviewed one, mailed questions for another, and need a phone number for the third (his name is Al Monchak, and if anyone has any ideas, please email me.)

My inspiration? Chief Bender’s Burden: The Silent Struggle of a Baseball Star, a 2008 biography by Tom Swift on the Hall of Fame pitcher. I received a copy in December and flipped to the acknowledgments not long after where Swift notes, “I sought anyone who could remember being in the same room with Charles Bender. It’s a small club.”

Marty last played in the PCL in 1952 and died in 1984, so it’s not difficult to find men who knew him. Swift faced a greater challenge since Bender played all but one game of his big league career between 1903 and 1917 and died in 1954, leaving no descendants. But to reference Teddy Roosevelt, I think Swift did a good job with what he had where he could.

The 2009 winner of the Seymour Medal from the Society for American Baseball Research — which Swift and I belong to — the book features exhaustive research. The main story spans 290 pages followed by a 36-page bibliographical essay that summarizes what is apparent throughout: Swift gathered every possible Bender detail, scouring microfilm of long-dead newspapers like the Philadelphia North American and chasing interviews. I venture Swift had many days like the magical one I experienced. His research sets a standard for me to live up to with my book.

Swift captures a seemingly complete portrait of Bender, good and bad. While noting his masterful pitching and ability to read opponents tipping their pitches, Swift also documents Bender’s lifelong drinking and that he killed a pedestrian while driving. A writer can easily neglect to seek these details.

Swift has a vivid, smooth writing style. Late in the book, he references an interview subject, a player Bender coached late in life named Joe Astroth. Swift writes:

The memory is precarious. A middle-aged man can seemingly remember precise details of the moment as a child he was stung by a bee and yet still forget where he left the car keys fifteen minutes before he had the recollection. Perhaps the vivid memories are so only because we’re fooling ourselves. The past is obscure, a convincing imposter (sic), too often remembered differently by different people. But sometimes you don’t need to be able to verify everything to find truth. Joe Astroth knows that Charles Bender’s life influenced his own.

My quibbles with the book are minor. Basically, I wanted more about the prejudices Bender faced as a Native American ballplayer. It’s what drew me initially. While the book notes racist coverage Bender received, more words recount game highlights. I understand such details are obligatory with sports-related books, but I don’t think they offer the most sensational story. The book didn’t hook me until the final chapters. There’s a reason I’m reviewing a book in mid-June that I received in December, though in fairness, I also have a short attention span. The Boys of Summer is a personal favorite, and I needed a year to finish it.

Swift writes in the bibliographical essay, “In Bender’s case, the usual fog of baseball legend and lore has been layered with the reality that he lived and played in the face of untold prejudice. That he was seldom asked about the most important aspect of his life story means a full portrait is categorically impossible. I have tried simply to present the closest thing I could.”

Fair enough, though I’d love to see what Swift can do with a contemporary subject. I think Swift chose Bender since he was born in his native state, Minnesota. Perhaps a biography on Kirby Puckett, a tragic figure there, could be in order.

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24 busy hours in the life of my site

A week and a half ago, my boss said he would have to cut my hours for June. I was bummed but also grateful to still have a job, and I figured things would be alright.

I’ve worked 16 hours since, and it turns out my new free time has been largely consumed by this site. I’ve written thousands of words, done several interviews and even covered a baseball-themed art show. To any fellow bloggers looking to improve traffic, I found that by doing extra footwork recently, I got immediate results. In the past five days, I’ve had more visitors than I used to get in entire months.

(By the way, before I go any further, I should say I’ve tried to steer this site away from personal posts of this nature. This post is mostly for friends, regular readers and fellow bloggers. To others: Monday will be business as usual here with a review of a book about a Deadball Era pitcher.)

More and more, I’m believing that Search Engine Optimization, at least for blogging, isn’t about fancy coding or high tech maneuvering. I think it’s about putting in long hours, doing work others in the blogosphere can’t or won’t do, making an original contribution.

Monday epitomized this. Here’s what transpired:

12:00 AM: The beginning of Monday morning finds me still awake, not having to work until Tuesday, finalizing my post on forgotten Negro League/semi-pro great John Donaldson. Having done three interviews the Thursday before, including an hour-and-twenty-minute session with Donaldson’s lead researcher Peter Gorton, I know I’ve been given a good story.

2:00 AM: I post my story, email David Pinto of Baseball Musings in hopes of getting a link and go to bed.

7:00 AM: I awaken as my roommate gets ready for work, check online, and see that Pinto has linked to me. Excited, I submit the story to another big site, Baseball Think Factory and email Gorton and my two other interview sources for the story.

7:44 AM: Since Donaldson played in Minnesota, I message a blogger there, Sooze of Babes Loves Baseball.

7:52 AM: Gorton emails positive feedback and suggests I submit the story for SABRgraphs, the Society for American Baseball Research’s weekly email of the best baseball writing from around the Internet.

8:05 AM: I email the person in charge of submissions for SABRgraphs, thinking her name is Robin.

8:11 AM: Actually, her name is Rebecca. But she says she will include my story. I cannot lose this morning.

8:23 AM: I email Gorton that the story is also up on Baseball Think Factory, telling him June 7 is officially Blogger Christmas for me (Baseball Prospectus will pick up the story, too, after SABRgraphs goes out on Thursday, and I’ll work out to contribute to a major baseball site, Seamheads.com.)

9:00 AM: Heading to a 9:30 personal appointment, I stop at the post office for a DVD from George Case III, whose dad, George Case, played in the majors from 1937-1947 and shot color footage there.

10:30 AM: I take my car to the shop for a tire rotation and oil change, since the place does a two-for-one deal and is walking distance from my apartment.

11:00 AM: I watch Case’s documentary. As I will write later for Friday, I think it’s good.

3:15 PM: The shop manager calls to say one of my tires needs to be repaired. I decide to take the car to Costco, since I have a warranty there and don’t want to spend more money. The only catch: It’s a long trek, by foot and BART, back to my apartment, and I have a 5:30 interview with Case III. Also, though I don’t realize it at the time, my only cell phone charger is in my car, since my cat chewed through my wall one, and my battery’s low.

5:31 PM: I return to my apartment just in time and call Case III. We have a good long talk until–

6:02 PM: My battery dies.

6:06 PM: I email Case III to arrange a follow-up for Tuesday. I also see a message from Sooze that she will link to the Donaldson story in a blog she does for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Somewhere in all this, I also finalized my post about if Don Mattingly belongs in the Hall of Fame.

Needless to say, I don’t have days like this very often, but I’d welcome another.

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Home movies

Bluege
Ossie Bluege of the Washington Senators in 1939 (George Case)

Every year when George Case returned from another season of baseball, it was time to show his movies.

The four-time American League All Star outfielder, who played for the Washington Senators and Cleveland Indians from 1937-1947, loved 8 mm color film. He shot footage of his family, duck hunts and, most significantly in historical terms, his playing career.

Case died in 1989 at 73 from emphysema but the five-time Major League stolen base champion lives on as the voice of a 37-minute color documentary, “Around The League 1939-1946,” compiled from the footage. His son George Case III, former executive director of the Society for American Baseball Research, produced a VHS version in 1989 and put in on DVD in 2008 (he’s selling copies for $35.95; anyone interested can email him at case67@verizon.net)

“I still have the original 8 mm film,” Case III said, “But I mean, it becomes very fragile over the years, so you put it on another tape, and it will last a lot longer. And that was my whole purpose of this, which was preserve it for future generations. I thought it was of great historic value and the fact that it’s color and then my dad’s commentary on there. You don’t really ever hear too much in the way of a former ballplayer talking about the scenes of a film.”

Color film footage of baseball prior to World War II is rare, the sport’s early days often captured in black-and-white newsreels. Case’s hand-held shots of various legends in Wizard of Oz-style technicolor (he got the Kodacolor 8 mm film from a friend at Eastman Kodak) are at once amateur, raw and surreal. I’ve never seen anything like this, and if anyone knows of similar work, I’d love to see it.

Case III said he has tried various methods to convert the 8 mm film into still shots. Two he’s been successful with are here, including another shot from 1939, Senators pitcher Ken Chase:

Chase

Case provided the narration a few years before his death and introduces us to many teammates in Washington where he played ten of his eleven seasons. He also tells as we watch Joe DiMaggio, Hank Greenberg, and Ted Williams take batting practice and Lefty Grove and Jimmie Foxx sit together in the Fenway Park dugout in 1940. We see two presidents, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, plus a weigh-in for boxing champ Joe Louis in the bowels of Griffith Stadium and a dash between Case and Olympic sprinting legend Jesse Owens (Owens wins.)

It’s the kind of history that was a matter-of-fact part of life for Case III growing up. Longtime Washington Post sportswriter Shirley Povich was a family friend. Two-time American League batting champ Mickey Vernon was Uncle Mickey (he also told Case III that he was listed in the phone book as James Vernon, saying, “Hey George, nobody knows my first name is James, not Mickey.”)

One natural question is why more people haven’t seen the bulk of this film beyond old ballplayers and their descendants, some of the chief customers. Case III said seven minutes of footage aired on HBO in 1991 and 1992, under exclusive agreement, in the first two segments of the three-part series, When It Was a Game, with his father’s narration dubbed over. He says a VHS copy of his film is in Cooperstown and he will donate a DVD too.

Case III said he called to offer Ken Burns the film for his Baseball mini-series that aired on PBS in 1994 and was in production for a number of years prior. However, Case III said he was shunted off by an assistant, and by the time Burns personally called to say the footage was exactly what he needed, the exclusive agreement had been made with HBO. (I emailed John Thorn, who served as senior creative consultant to the Baseball mini-series and spent a few years in the editing room. I asked if he knew anything about this and could offer insight. Thorn replied, “Nope.”)

I’ll close with a 16-second silent clip Case III let me use. It shows Nick Altrock, the Clown Prince of Baseball and a Senators coach, performing part of a routine with another member of the club in 1940. My friend Jose shot it with his camera phone as it played on my TV, so the footage is grainier than what’s on the DVD but I don’t think this entry would be complete without it:

[Update 6/21/10: I wrote a guest post for Seamheads.com that includes DVD-quality color footage of Williams and DiMaggio from 1940. The clip below stays for posterity.]

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Different player/Different era: Ken Griffey Jr.

What he did: Griffey retired last week as one of the greatest ballplayers of his generation, so I won’t regurgitate all the statistics and stories of his greatness that have since shot around the Internet besides to say his 630 home runs, astonishing first half of his career and spotless reputation throughout make him a definite Hall of Famer. But that’s not why I’m writing these words.

This post was inspired by a Joe Posnanski article in the June 14 issue of Sports Illustrated that included a quote from baseball legend Buck O’Neil about Griffey, “He could play in any era.” It seemed like an interesting idea worth exploring more and the article subhead teased it. But the piece was mostly about Griffey’s greatness early in his career and how much more he might have achieved in his own era had injuries not taken their toll over the past decade. It’s a story many have written in the past several years. Posnanski told his story gracefully, as he often does, but I think he missed an opportunity.

Perhaps Posnanski was apprehensive about painting a broader picture of how Griffey might have fared in a particular different era, which isn’t always easy to do. I’ve heard a retired baseball scout I know named Ronnie King say more than once that the game should be judged in 10 year intervals since it changes so much. Still, this new Thursday segment is built around the idea that such comparisons can be made. I’m going to delve deeper into what O’Neil said about Griffey.

Era he might have thrived in: For our purposes, let’s forget the color barrier that barred blacks from playing prior to 1947 and look at how ridiculously well a young Griffey might have done in the 1930s.

Why: This was the Golden Age for hitters, and if Griffey played then, he might have hit .400 or won a Triple Crown or both. The 1930 Philadelphia Phillies for instance hit .315 as a team even with a center fielder named Denny Sothern hitting .280. If Griffey replaces Sothern he joins an outfield of Chuck Klein and Lefty O’Doul who hit .386 and .383 that year, respectively. Imagine that 3-4-5 in the batting order.

Griffey also gets to play his home games at the Baker Bowl, one of the few stadiums in baseball history that was more of a hitter’s park than where he spent his best years, the Kingdome. As a left-handed pull hitter, Griffey would destroy the 280.5-foot Baker Bowl right field short porch, even with its 60-foot fence. Either Griffey gets adept at hooking flies over it or he sets the record for doubles. No matter what, the man who hit .327 in 1991 soars to greater heights than ever before.

I invite anyone to take a stab at what Griffey’s numbers might have been in 1930 (I’m guessing 55 home runs, 180 runs batted in and a .395 batting average.) Better, I encourage anyone to offer their perfect era for Griffey.

Different player/Different era is a Thursday feature here that examines how a baseball player might have fared in an era besides his own.

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Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? Don Mattingly

Claim to fame: Donnie Baseball, as fans knew him, ranked with Wade Boggs and Tony Gwynn as one of the premier hitters of the 1980s. He hit over .300 six consecutive seasons from 1984 through 1989, twice led the American League in hits and was the circuit MVP in 1985, on his way to a lifetime .307 average. Mattingly also won nine Gold Gloves, second-most all-time among first basemen and retired in 1995 having played his entire career for the New York Yankees, a rarity in the era of free agency.

Current Hall of Fame eligibility: Mattingly has appeared on the Baseball Writers Association of America ballot 10 times and has five remaining years of eligibility.

Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? Whether Mattingly belongs in Cooperstown or eventually is honored are different questions to me.

I think Mattingly parallels with Steve Garvey and Nomar Garciaparra, players who would easily make the Hall of Fame had they sustained the early pace of their careers. Mattingly struggled with injuries over his final six seasons, hitting above .300 just once before retiring at 34. Were it up to me, I probably wouldn’t enshrine him. I’ll honor players with truncated careers if there’s a compelling reason, as I wrote last week, but injuries don’t rate as such for me, unless we’re talking Sandy Koufax, and Mattingly was never that dominant.

With that said, I think there’s a better than 50 percent chance the Veterans Committee enshrines Mattingly eventually. Why? Mattingly got 28.2% of the BBWAA vote, his highest total thus far, in his first year of eligibility in 2001.

Not counting Mattingly and five other players still eligible for enshrinement through the BBWAA, 25 players peaked between 20-30% of the writers vote for the Hall of Fame in the past 75 years. Of those 25 players, 13 are now in Cooperstown, and that number could climb as men who peaked in the last 30 years begin to be honored by the Veterans Committee, which sometimes has a slow turnaround.

In chronological order of their peak, the 25 players are:

  • Mordecai Brown (HOF): Peaked at 27.0% in 1942, enshrined by Old Timers Committee in 1949; sought by Mr. Burns to pitch for Springfield Nuclear Plant (though he kicked Mattingly off the team)
  • Fred Clarke (HOF): Peaked at 24.9% in 1942, enshrined by Old Timers Committee in 1945
  • Joe McGinnity (HOF): Peaked at 25.3% in 1942, enshrined by Old Timers Committee in 1946
  • Eddie Plank (HOF): Peaked at 27.0% in 1942, enshrined by Old Timers Committee in 1946
  • Ross Youngs (HOF): Peaked at 22.4% in 1947, enshrined by Veterans Committee in 1972
  • Zack Wheat (HOF): Peaked at 23.0% in 1947, enshrined by Veterans Committee in 1959
  • Casey Stengel (HOF): Peaked at 23.1% in 1953, enshrined by Veterans Committee in 1966
  • Chuck Klein (HOF): Peaked at 27.9% in 1964, enshrined by Veterans Committee in 1980
  • Lloyd Waner (HOF): Peaked at 23.4% in 1964, enshrined by Veterans Committee in 1967
  • Mel Harder: Peaked at 25.4% in 1964
  • Johnny Vander Meer: Peaked at 29.8% in 1967
  • Billy Herman (HOF): Peaked at 20.2% in 1967, enshrined by Veterans Committee in 1975
  • Bucky Walters: Peaked at 23.7% in 1968
  • Joe Gordon (HOF): Peaked at 28.5% in 1969, enshrined by Veterans Committee in 2009
  • Arky Vaughan (HOF): Peaked at 29.0% in 1968, enshrined by Veterans Committee in 1985
  • Tom Henrich: Peaked at 20.7% in 1970
  • Bobby Doerr (HOF): Peaked at 25.0% in 1970, enshrined by Veterans Committee in 1970
  • Mickey Vernon: Peaked at 24.9% in 1980
  • Elston Howard: Peaked at 20.7% in 1981
  • Lew Burdette: Peaked at 24.1% in 1984
  • Mickey Lolich: Peaked at 25.5% in 1988
  • Minnie Minoso: Peaked at 21.1% in 1988
  • Ken Boyer: Peaked at 25.5% in 1988
  • Jim Kaat: Peaked at 29.6% in 1993
  • Joe Torre: Peaked at 22.2% in 1997

The five players besides Mattingly still eligible:

  • Dave Parker: Peaked at 24.5% in 1998
  • Dale Murphy: Peaked at 23.2% in 2000
  • Mark McGwire: Peaked at 28.2% in 2001
  • Fred McGriff: Peaked at 21.5% in 2010
  • Alan Trammell: Peaked at 22.4% in 2010

So Mattingly has history on his side, even if I’m not totally.

Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? is a Tuesday feature here that debuted on June 1, 2010.

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A great pitcher you’ve never heard of

Photobucket

He died in poverty in Chicago 40 years ago and lay in an unmarked grave before money was raised for a headstone.

His lead researcher credits 363 wins to him through 32 years of Negro League and semi-pro ball– and those are just the wins he’s certain of.

The researcher calls the pitcher he’s spent a decade studying “Satchel Paige 20 years before he was Satchel Paige.”

Meet John Donaldson, one of the greatest baseball players history forgot.

Donaldson pitched on one level or another from 1908 to 1940, crossing paths with Negro League immortals like Paige, Ray Dandridge and Buck O’Neil while also facing white players around the Midwest in semi-pro competition. But by the time his lead researcher Peter Gorton heard of him ten years ago, his story had been relegated to obscurity.

Gorton was approached by his former high school history teacher who was writing a history of black baseball in Minnesota and wanted him to pen a chapter that would include Donaldson, who once pitched in a small town near where Gorton is from. A research group calling itself the Donaldson Network has since developed, documenting the story.

“It’s been buried for almost a hundred years, and there’s a reason for that, and that is, it’s not something that’s sitting right on the top,” said Gorton, an IT worker by day who lives in Minneapolis with a wife and two small children. “You have to dig around in it and try and figure it out, which we’re trying to do.”

The history of Major League Baseball is well-documented, and sites like Baseball-Reference make information on any ex-big league player instantly accessible. It’s harder to find much on the minor leagues and Negro Leagues.

Gorton estimates his group has accounted for 60 percent of Donaldson’s career, thus far. The network only counts verified statistics and, for instance, doesn’t include 100 games where it is uncertain of his strikeout totals. “The Donaldson Network is not in the business of speculating what might have happened,” Gorton said.

Donaldson’s wife died a couple years after him, and no descendants or family histories are known of. Gorton said old newspaper accounts provide the primary source of information. Routinely, visitors to his Web site send him photocopies of articles in the mail. Gorton also said he sometimes calls strangers in towns Donaldson’s teams visited and has them look up newspaper accounts of games.

Donaldson was a marquee name, able to help teams erase debts with late-season appearances that drew thousands. “In John Donaldson’s case, in the Midwest everybody knew who he was,” Gorton said.

Film footage exists of Donaldson, included here with Gorton’s permission. A scout named John Klima who saw the film told me in an email interview that Donaldson would have been a staff ace in the majors. He called Donaldson, “A rubber arm, durable workhorse who should have been a front-end major league starter for many years.”

In later years, Donaldson worked for the Chicago White Sox, scouting a young Willie Mays in the Negro Leagues.

So why isn’t Donaldson remembered? There are a few possibilities. Some may say his statistics aren’t noteworthy since they came against a mix of competition, some of it inferior to pro ball. Gorton also said Donaldson may have had a rift with O’Neil who enchantingly recounted memories of Paige and others in the Ken Burns Baseball mini-series that aired on PBS in 1994. Assuming the rift existed, perhaps it’s one reason there’s no mention of Donaldson in the series or accompanying book (coincidentally, Donaldson and O’Neil were among 39 Negro League finalists for the Hall of Fame in 2006, though neither was inducted.)

There may be a deeper reason for the lack of recognition for Donaldson. One of Gorton’s acquaintances through his research is John Thorn, a veteran baseball author who served as senior creative consultant on the Baseball series and, like Gorton, is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research. Thorn told me in a telephone interview that baseball feels no responsibility to honor latter day players, white or black.

“Major League Baseball has made the judgment that 1/10th of 1 percent of all baseball fans cares about anything that happened prior to World War II, and they’re not going to devote very much of their resources to pleasing that 1/10th of 1 percent,” Thorn said. “You can’t argue with it as a business decision. You can argue with it as a philosophical or historical question because if baseball is an important institution, then it ought to be important to learn where it came from and how it grew.”

I’ll close with the footage of Donaldson, hand-cranked at Fergus Falls, Minnesota on August 16, 1925. Donaldson faced off that day against Joe Jaeger who made two relief appearances for the Chicago Cubs in 1920, and advertisements for the game called Donaldson “the colored wonder pitcher.”

If anyone has an opinion on Donaldson’s technique, Gorton would love to hear it.

(Postscript: More quotes from John Thorn)

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Notes from the annual Art of Baseball Exhibit at the George Krevsky Gallery

PhotobucketWinky, San Francisco Seals, 2010, Stacey Carter

I’m standing next to Tom O’Doul, 67, who looks so much like his famous cousin Lefty O’Doul it’s uncanny, and as we view a painting of a bat boy for the team Tom once knew, he says it’s fairly accurate. Never a bat boy himself, though he got to go in the dugout during games, Tom explains a subtly the artist captured, how San Francisco Seals bat boys received a blue cap with SEALS in white block letters, while players got caps with SF lettering.

It’s the sort of attention to detail that sometimes gets neglected in other works. Art and baseball don’t always have the smoothest conflux, as Lefty O’Doul could attest from his time trying to teach Gary Cooper how to properly swing for Pride of the Yankees or the makers of Field of Dreams might cop to, since they had Shoeless Joe Jackson bat right-handed since he hit from the left but Ray Liotta could not. Still, many of the works in the 13th annual Art of Baseball exhibit at the George Krevsky Gallery in San Francisco accurately reflected the game.

I attended the exhibit Thursday evening with Tom O’Doul and other members of the Society for American Baseball Research, which I recently joined. Coincidentally, the gallery is three blocks down Geary Street from Lefty O’Doul’s bar and restaurant.

I’m generally not much of a museum guy. While some people spend hours looking at a painting, I could probably do the Louvre in under a half hour. Heck, I even breezed through the National Baseball Hall of Fame when I was there in 1997. So I don’t have any sophisticated artistic expertise to offer here, besides to say that aesthetically, I found the show pleasing.

The works varied in style, though some of my favorites had a lifelike quality to them. Arthur K. Miller contributed paintings of Mickey Mantle, Juan Marichal, Satchel Paige and this one of Tim Lincecum:

PhotobucketTim Lincecum, Arthur K. Miller

I enjoyed talking baseball with the various people in attendance, including gallery owner George Krevsky, who said he played baseball for Penn State. I pride myself on my baseball library, and Krevsky has one that could rival it in the office that connects with the main room of his gallery. Along with classics I’ve read like The Boys of Summer and Baseball’s Great Experiment, I noticed copies of three books by Jim Bouton, one of my favorites. Krevsky said Bouton used to play handball with his father, who was nationally ranked and that in years past he’s wanted to get Bouton to the show.

This year, Krevsky featured a reading and signing by another author, Jeff Gillenkirk, who’s written for The New York Times, The Washington Post and Mother Jones magazine and whose latest book, Home, Away debuts this month (Gillenkirk said a glitch on Amazon says it can’t be purchased there until September but that it’s available on his publisher’s Web site.) The book is about a ballplayer who leaves the big leagues to be closer to his son, and Gillenkirk read an excerpt where the 39-year-old protagonist winds up in independent league ball at $65 a game.

All in all, it was an enjoyable night and probably the last time I’ll go to an art show for a long time unless I meet a girl or the San Francisco Giants invite me to a gallery opening. In a perfect world, both could happen.

I’ll close with this last work by Valentin Popov, a Ukrainian-born artist Krevsky said he’s admired for years but had never painted baseball before and “didn’t know baseball from a pineapple.” I would be interested to see what other baseball works Popov can produce.

PhotobucketFriday Night, Valentin Popov

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The Kid leaves the picture

All the talk yesterday regarding a blown call costing a pitcher a perfect game may have taken some attention away from what would have otherwise been the story of the day: the retirement of Ken Griffey Jr.

Granted, it wasn’t as surprising a story, since the once seemingly-eternally young Griffey looked more fit for a senior softball league by the end, hitting below .200 for the Mariners and purportedly falling asleep in the clubhouse, missing pinch hitting duties. It wasn’t fun to see Griffey at the end, a beloved player for his youthful energy, supreme talent in the first half of his career and his (we all hope it’s true) steadfast refusal to use performance enhancing drugs. And he was a tragic figure for having more injury-marred seasons than healthy ones in the last decade.

Griffey played in his final game on May 31, one day after the 75-year anniversary of the last time Babe Ruth shuffled out in a Boston Braves uniform that never looked right. Both Griffey and Ruth left the game at 40, shells of the immortals they once were, and, as I wrote in November, their ends bring to mind other greats like Rickey Henderson and Willie Mays who looked like old men by the end of their careers.

Really, short of Ted Williams, who hit .316 his final year and homered in his last at-bat, star players rarely seem to bow out near the top of their games. They generally stay until teams will no longer play them, or — in recent years — if they have some kind of steroid-related disgrace, as Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Rafael Palmeiro, and Jose Canseco could attest.

I think I understand why players don’t want to leave. I know I do what I love in life because something feels missing from it when I don’t. In my case, I’m lucky because one of the things I love most, writing, can be a lifelong pursuit. Baseball players get a limited number of years to pursue their passions, and while the sport offers more years of competition than many others, it probably still feels all too short. So I’m sure there must be a temptation for a player to squeeze every last bit of enjoyment out of baseball while there’s still time, to milk every last cheer, to earn every last contract dollar.

Griffey at least had the good sense to make his retirement effective immediately, instead of opting for a tear-filled farewell tour. It seems he’d make a great hitting coach somewhere should a team give him a shot. If Mark McGwire can get this opportunity, as I wrote about in October, it seems only fair to consider Griffey as well.

With everything being said, Griffey finished with 630 home runs, likely rates among the finest ballplayers of his generation and should be a first-ballot Hall of Famer. I have family in Seattle and am happy to say that childhood trips there included a few visits to the Kingdome where I saw Griffey in his prime, when he had one of the most graceful swings I’ve seen. That’s the image I’ll keep of him.