Baseball: Past and Present

During the 1950s, San Francisco Seals were the most fortunate players in baseball. Paul Fagan, their generous owner, spared no expense to make his squad comfortable. During that era, the Seals had stars-to-be like Ferris Fain, Gene Woodling, Lew Burdette and Larry Jansen to name a few.

Under manager Lefty O’ Doul’s direction, the Seals often (though not always) fielded competitive teams. Fagan, hoping to make the Pacific Coast League the third major league to join with the American and National, kept an eye out for the best players. When he took over the Seals in 1946, Fagan said to previous owner Charlie Graham, “I only know two baseball names—Bob Feller and Joe DiMaggio. I don’t know what they will cost. I want ‘em.”

One of the most innovative minds in baseball, Fagan introduced concession stands, upgraded the Seals Stadium ladies room with a million dollar investment and built a spring training facility on Maui. Fagan, whose personal fortune came from his family’s banking businesses and Hawaii real estate made sure his players always traveled first class. The Seals even had large sleeping quarters, a spacious dining area and a soda fountain where they could get ice cream at any time.

1. 1994-95 MLB strike: Still the gold standard for labor disputes in organized sports, if mainly because the costs were staggering: work stopped for eight months, no 1994 World Series, and a sport with fan appeal so decimated that steroid use was tacitly condoned thereafter. Tell me what this was all about again.

2. 1998-99 NBA lockout: While basketball players and management were midway into a dispute that forced an abbreviated 50-game schedule for the 1998-99 NBA season, Rick Reilly penned a column for Sports Illustrated referencing the plight of striking Peterbilt truck workers. Reilly wrote of blue collar strikers getting by on a few hundred dollars a week compared with basketball players sweating insurance for their fleets of sports cars. “There are two major labor disputes in America right now,” Reilly wrote. “One of them is a joke.”

3. 1982 NFL strike: Besides the 1994-95 baseball strike or 2004-05 hockey lockout, this ranks as the longest work stoppage for a major American sports league, at least proportion-wise. The NFL wound up with a truncated nine-game season that year and 16-team playoff format.

4. 1981 MLB strike: Baseball lost nearly two months of its 1981 season, and though I don’t hear it talked about as conspiracy, popular union leader and Cy Young-winning relief pitcher Mike Marshall couldn’t get a team to sign him until after the strike ended.

5. 1987 NFL strike: This work stoppage lasted a month and featured one week of cancelled games and three weeks of games with replacement players (together with a few picket line-crossing stars like Joe Montana and Steve Largent.) All in all, this ran a bit like the film The Replacements, only without Keanu Reeves.

6. 2004-2005 NHL lockout: This actually led to the cancellation of an entire hockey season, though I’m not sure anyone cared. I don’t know if that merits higher or lower placement on this list.

7. 1972 MLB strike: This was the first strike in the history of major American sports and The Sporting News called the day it began the darkest in the history of sports. Some teams lost six games from their schedules, others seven, and because of the discrepancy, the Boston Red Sox lost the American League East title by half a game to the Detroit Tigers.

8. 2011 NFL lockout: This could’ve been a lot worse.

9. 1990 MLB lockout: Baseball’s equivalent of the recent football lockout in that some training games got cancelled but things fell far short of nightmare doomsday scenarios folks may have envisioned.

10. 1912 Detroit Tigers strike: American League president Ban Johnson suspended Ty Cobb indefinitely in May of 1912 after he beat a fan in the stands for calling him a “half-nigger.” Supportive Tiger teammates struck in solidarity, and to avoid forfeiting its next game, Detroit management fielded a team of replacements, some with baseball experience, others not so much. Any work stoppage that results in a Catholic priest (Aloysius Travers) taking to the mound and surrendering 24 runs, still a modern day record, deserves mention here.

Here it is the first week of August and already we see evidence that all heck is breaking loose in Major League Baseball. From incidents of “sweating” on umpires to multiple ejections to head hunting, baseball is once again living up to the old axiom that August brings out the worst in some players. The dog days, here we are.

Major League Baseball is often a grueling long distance race leaving many players on the Disabled List and some unemployed or in the minors. The promise of the first gentle, warm April days often gives way to the cold hard reality of another long and unsuccessful season wrought with failure, injury and harsh criticism from the media. Even seasoned veterans can fall victim to this seemingly most trying of all baseball months. With each passing day, time to overcome any obstacles seems to be slipping faster and faster away. Time to turn an individual’s season around now seems to be the enemy. For some, the whispers of wait until next year are becoming louder and more direct.

It’s not only the players and coaches who succumb to emotional outbursts. Umpires tend to have a shorter fuse and are less tolerant of questions concerning their competence or general rule interpretations.

Such questions or comments which might have been ignored in the previous four months seem more personal and confrontational now. As umpires seek to maintain control, players seek more and creative ways to bargain their way out of situations or bend the rules. Both seem to be walking that proverbial tight rope when there is only room for one.

One would imagine that the distractions of the July 31 trade deadline might have lessened or even been eliminated for some. The uncertainty of will he or won’t he have to uproot his family, get used to another city or league and fit in with new teammates should have come and gone, having been decided one way or another. Either a new happiness and sense of excitement has set in (going to a contender), disappointment in staying with a hopelessly out of the race team, or a huge sense of relief at not changing teams is now setting in. Certainly the July 31st deadline doesn’t mean the end of player movement as we have so often witnessed in the past. Some players will continue to look over their shoulders, wishfully or otherwise, until the conclusion of the regular season.

The pressure keeps building and something has to give. Players who are normally quiet and businesslike can suddenly explode over previously shrugged off borderline calls. The “gee ump that looked a bit low from here” is now replaced by various colorful metaphors and the questioning of an umpires mothers standing in the community. Such actions which in April, May, June, or July would be dutifully ignored or greeted with a knowing smile, become personal and inflammatory in August. The pen may be mightier than the sword but an umpire’s thumb is the mightiest of them all and if the manager doesn’t like it, he is more than welcome to quickly join his offending player in the showers.

The admiration of a long home run, however brief, is not tolerated in the dog days. The phrases unwritten rule and payback are used to justify mid 90’s fastball aimed specifically at the batter responsible for such a now-dire oneuppance. Naturally this action will justify and cause a retaliatory reaction from the opposition and so forth and so on resulting in warnings/rejections or the meeting near the mound of all players from both teams for an exchange of opinions and suggested solutions.

Normally docile fans can also fall victim to the dog days. The frustration of their team’s failures, the success of the opposition or an umpire’s failure to decipher the strike zone or a missed tag can ignite behavior which wouldn’t be tolerated at the biker bar down the street. Even the gentler sex has been known to become an all seeing and all knowing expert umpire, correcting on field decisions with passionate and explicative filled reports and body language.

Grandmothers and little children beware, lock your doors and turn off the lights. At least until September. At least until the dog days are done.

Every week in this space, I write about a doubleheader that either played an important part in a pennant race or had some other historical significance.

Today, I’m ratcheting it up a notch. My subject is the last tripleheader ever played. The amazing event took place at Forbes Field on October 2, 1920 when the Pirates hosted the Cincinnati Reds.

What forced the triple dip was a rain out of the Friday night game. Apparently, little was at stake. The Brooklyn Robins had sewed up first place, the Giants were comfortably in second ahead of the soon-to-be-displaced World Champion Reds with the Pirates in fourth trailing Cincinnati by 3-1/2 games.

The rain out canceled one of the four remaining games on the schedule and meant that the Pirates were dead in their quest for third place: 3-1/2 games back with only three left to play.

But Pirates Hall of Fame owner Barney Dreyfuss recognized that third place was “in the money”.  If his team could sneak into third, his players would qualify for a small World Series share.

Dreyfuss appealed to National League president John Heydler who agreed, over the vigorous protestations of Reds’ manager Pat Moran, to replay the rain out.

Suddenly, the Pirates were alive again. The standings still showed the Corsairs 3-1/2 behind Cincinnati but now with four to play.

With three games on the bill, the opener started at the unusually early hour of 12 noon. Corsair manager George Gibson picked his ace and 24 game winner Wilbur Cooper for the crucial first game. The drama didn’t last long. The Reds bombed Cooper with 10 hits and 8 runs in 2-2/3 innings and won handily, 13-4 thus finally and officially locking up third.

Games two and three were frill. In the second, the Reds shellacked the Corsairs again, 7-3. As evidence of his indifference, Moran started four pitchers as position players. In the third and final contest, cut short by darkness after six innings, the Pirates finally prevailed, 6-0.

The game times are worth noting: the first, 2:03; second, 1:56; third, 1:01. Fans saw three games in exactly five hours or 1:39 less than the Pirates 19-inning marathon on July 26 in the team’s 4-3 loss to the Braves in Atlanta.

What he did: If baseball awarded the equivalent of Oscars, Pinson would have been a perennial Best Supporting Actor nominee. One of the quintessential role players of the 1960s, Pinson did many things well, hitting for average and power, stealing 305 bases lifetime, and finishing just shy of 3,000 hits. He was never really a star, overshadowed by Cincinnati Reds teammates like Frank Robinson and Pete Rose, though Pinson placed as high as third in MVP voting in 1961 when he led Cincinnati to the World Series. In another era, a fellow blogger told me, Pinson might have been more.

Era he might have thrived in: Arne Christensen of Misc. Baseball suggested Pinson could make a good pick here, noting in a recent email:

His game of speed and some power would have really shined in the astroturf ’70s and ’80s.

Arne may be on to something. Astroturf is something of a bygone novelty in baseball, seen less and less these days, but in the era Arne suggests, speedy sluggers like Andre Dawson, Barry Bonds, and Eric Davis were regular threats in carpeted stadiums and beyond to hit 30 home runs and steal north of 30 bases. Pinson might have figured aptly into their ranks.

Why: First of all, count Pinson as another great hitter who may have missed out on the Hall of Fame because his prime years happened to fall in the 1960s. Like Jimmy Wynn, Frank Howard, Bob Watson, and maybe a few others from this decade, Pinson might have had a better shot at Cooperstown had he not peaked at a time that so clearly favored pitchers. As it stands, he went the full 15 years on the writers ballot for the Hall of Fame, and if he’s not a viable Veterans Committee candidate today, he at least rates an honorable mention.

Maybe the ’70s and ’80s weren’t the 1920s or ’30s or late 1990s, able to add 40 batting average points and 50 to 100 home runs to Pinson’s lifetime totals. But it’s likely his .286 batting average and 256 home runs would rise enough in any other time in baseball history since the Deadball Era to get him enshrined. He might not approach Dawson’s 438 home runs, but he’d surely increase his .327 to .323 advantage in on-percentage and have a chance at 3,000 hits (and near-automatic enshrinement.) And one can only wonder how many more bases Pinson would have stolen than Dawson’s 314.

Pinson played from 1958 through 1975, and I suspect if he’d debuted even 10 years later, he might have had 100 more steals lifetime, minimum. Almost simultaneous to Pinson’s best seasons in the early and mid ’60s, speedsters like Luis Aparicio and Maury Wills were helping make the stolen base popular again in baseball. Perhaps Pinson had the talent to steal 20 to 30 bases a year whatever his era, though I’d like to think that in the ’70s or ’80s, he’d have been around coaches who could have refined his craft. And the Astroturf would have surely sped his step.

Pinson died of a stroke at 57 in 1995 and is buried in Richmond, California, not far from where I currently sit writing this post in Berkeley. I suspect that as more time passes, Pinson will be increasingly forgotten. That’s a shame.

Any player/Any era is a Thursday feature here that looks at how a player might have done in an era besides his own.

Others in this series: Albert Pujols, Babe Ruth, Bad News Rockies, Barry Bonds, Billy Martin, Bob Caruthers, Bob Feller, Bob Watson, Bobby Veach, Carl Mays, Charles Victory Faust, Chris von der Ahe, Denny McLain, Dom DiMaggio, Eddie Lopat, Frank Howard, Fritz Maisel, Gavvy Cravath, George Case, George Weiss, Harmon Killebrew, Harry Walker, Home Run Baker, Honus Wagner, Ichiro Suzuki, Jack Clark, Jackie Robinson, Jimmy Wynn, Joe DiMaggio, Joe Posnanski, Johnny Antonelli, Johnny Frederick, Josh Hamilton, Ken Griffey Jr., Lefty Grove, Lefty O’Doul, Major League (1989 film), Matty Alou, Michael Jordan, Monte Irvin, Nate Colbert, Paul Derringer, Pete Rose, Prince Fielder, Ralph Kiner, Rick Ankiel, Rickey Henderson, Roberto Clemente, Rogers Hornsby, Sam Crawford, Sam Thompson, Sandy Koufax, Satchel Paige, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Stan Musial, Ted Williams, The Meusel Brothers, Ty Cobb, Wally Bunker, Willie Mays

Last week, I wrote about how Robin Roberts carried the Philadelphia Phillies to the 1950 National League championship.

For most baseball fans, with the exception of old timers who live in the Philadelphia area, Roberts is linked to the Phillies forever and all time.

But, in truth, Roberts had a rich and rewarding life long before and long after he wore a Phillies jersey.

Born in Springfield, IL., Roberts arrived in East Lansing, Michigan as part of Army Air Corp training program. After World War II, Roberts returned to Michigan State College to play basketball where he led the Spartans’ in field-goal percentage in 1946–1947, captained the team during the 1946–1947 and 1949–1950 seasons and earned three varsity letters.

After his second basketball season Roberts tried out for the Spartans’ baseball team as a pitcher because it was the position that coach John Kobs needed most. After playing for Michigan State and spending his second summer in Vermont with the Barre–Montpelier Twin City Trojans, Roberts signed with the Phillies in 1947 for $25,000. With the money, Roberts bought his mother a house.

Roberts repaid the Phillies handsomely. Between 1950 and 1955 Roberts won 20 games each season, leading the National League in victories from 1952 to 1955. Six times he led the league in games started, five times in complete games and innings pitched and once pitched 28 complete games in a row. During his career, Roberts never walked more than 77 batters in any regular season. In addition, he helped himself as a fielder as well as with his bat, hitting 55 doubles, 10 triples, and five home runs with 103 RBI.

His 28 wins in 1952, the year he won The Sporting News Player of the Year Award, were the most in the National League since 1935 when Dizzy Dean also won 28 games.

Roberts followed up his 28 wins with another outstanding season. In 1953, he posted a 23–16 record and led NL pitchers in strikeouts with 198. In a career-high 346⅔ innings pitched, Roberts walked just 66 batters and his 2.75 ERA was second behind Warren Spahn’s 2.10.

A memorable Roberts’ career highlight came on May 13, 1954 when he gave up a lead-off home run to the Cincinnati Redlegs’ Bobby Adams but then retired 27 consecutive batters to win 8–1 on a one-hit game.

Roberts stayed with the Phillies until 1961. The following year Roberts signed with the New York Yankees but was released during spring training. Noting that April is bad time to get cut because other squads are set, Roberts said: “I didn’t know what to do. I was thirty-four years old.”

At the urging of his old friend and scout, Cy Perkins, Roberts signed on with the Baltimore Orioles. Perkins had once told Roberts that he would pitch a shutout when he was 40. Roberts pitched effectively for the Orioles; for parts of four seasons, Roberts went 42-36, 3.09 ERA.

From Baltimore, Roberts went to Houston were he continued to pitch well; 8-7, 2.77 during two seasons. Now 40, the end was approaching for Roberts. At the end of his last season with Houston, Roberts recalled: “I found my arm swelling up and had an arm operation to correct the problem.”

In 1966, Roberts joined the Chicago Cubs as the team’s pitching coach and spot starter. At the end of the year, Roberts elected not to return to the Cubs but instead chose to pitch in Reading of the Eastern League. In a bargain he made with himself, Roberts agreed to pitch until June 1st. If no team picked him up, he would retire. Although Roberts pitched well by notching a 5-3 mark that included the shutout Perkins predicted, he had no major league suitors.

After Roberts retired, many asked if he was sorry that he never reached 300 wins (286).  Roberts answered that “What I really was striving for was to pitch until I was forty-four or forty-five. I knew if I could do that, the wins would take care of themselves.”

The Phillies never gave Roberts much help. After 1950, the team was consistently at the bottom of the standings. After his professional baseball career ended, Roberts worked in an investment firm, did sports radio broadcasting and coached at the University of South Florida.

In 1976, six years after he became eligible, Roberts was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

No, not the Cueto-Phillips-Votto Reds, and not the Rose-Morgan-Perez Reds, but the players named for their hair color – the guys called Red. This nickname, once very common in baseball and in American society in general, has apparently fallen out of favor.

Scanning Baseball-Reference.com, it becomes clear that there have been dozens of major leaguers nicknamed Red, but very few of them have played in the past 50 years. It’s not that redheads have disappeared from the game, it’s just that their nicknames have changed. Daniel Staub was better known as Rusty, and in Montreal was also dubbed Le Grand Orange, but he was never called Red. More recently, Bobby Kielty carries the nickname Ronnie Mac in honor of his vague resemblance to the red-haired corporate mascot Ronald McDonald. Many others in the major leagues in recent decades have sported red locks, but none answers to the name Red.

Here is a starting lineup of players nicknamed Red:

P: Urban Faber (1914-1933)

Red Faber is one of two Hall of Fame pitchers nicknamed Red, Charles Ruffing being the other. In a 20-year career with the White Sox, Faber had a 3.15 ERA and won more than 250 games. His best years were in the early 1920s, when he twice led the league in ERA and once led the league with 352 innings pitched. He remained an effective hurler into his mid-40s, if not quite the inning-eater he was as a younger man. In contrast, Red Ruffing is considered a marginal member of the Hall. Most of his 273 career wins came on very strong Yankees teams, and his career ERA+ of 110 is good but not elite. Honorable mention goes to Leon Ames, the deadball era pitcher for the Giants, Reds, and Cardinals, whose 1.23 career WHIP is lower than Faber’s and Ruffing’s.

C: Robert Wilson (1951-1960)

Red Wilson gets the nod over John Kleinow (1904-1911) and Charles Dooin (1902-1916), as much for his being one the few Reds to have played as recently as 1960, as for his on-field performance. Mostly a backup to Frank House and Lou Berberet in Detroit, Wilson only once played as many as 100 games in a season. For his career, he batted .258 with an OPS+ of 87. Kleinow and Dooin were no better as hitters; each had a 71 OPS+.

1B: Ralph Kress (1927-1946)

Okay, Red Kress was mostly a shortstop and a very good one, but while there have been some very good red-haired first basemen (Mark McGwire, for one), there have been no standouts named Red. In his long career, Kress played all positions except catcher; he even made four pitching appearances, throwing 9.1 innings. His 162 games at 1B (most of them in 1933 with the White Sox) qualify him to take this position in the all-Red lineup. In ’33, he batted .248, somewhat below his career .286 average. His best years came earlier with the St. Louis Browns, when he batted .300 or better in ’29, ’30, and ’31.

2B: Albert Schoendienst (1945-1963)

Is there anything not to like about Red Schoendienst, the career Cardinal? A Hall of Famer, Schoendienst’s playing days started in 1945, and except for a couple brief stints as a player and coach for other teams, his entire professional life has been spent with the St. Louis organization. A nine-time All-Star, he was a good hitter (.289 BA) and a graceful middle infielder. Now a vibrant 88 year-old, he moves more nimbly than many ex-ballplayers half his age. As manager in the 1960s, he led St. Louis to a championship in 1967 and an NL pennant in 1968. He even arranged for his wife to sing the national anthem at World Series games. Not least among his charming features, when Schoendienst dons the St. Louis uniform, his 12-letter last name horseshoes ‘round his frame, the leading S and trailing T reaching down somewhere near his floating ribs.

3B: Robert Rolfe (1931-1945)

Red Rolfe was the starting third baseman for the Yankees from 1935 through 1941, earning his way onto the All-Star team in four of those seasons. In his best year, 1939, he led the AL in hits, doubles and runs while posting a 130 OPS+. He walked 526 times in 5405 career PA, contributing to a respectable .360 OBP. Being a selective hitter, he would fit very nicely into the modern game, except for his nickname of course.

SS: Maurice Shannon (1915-1926)

With Red Kress holding down first base, Red Shannon is the natural choice to take the field at shortstop, although to be honest he had a less than spectacular career. A .259 hitter, Shannon’s best season came in 1920, when he hit .288 in 62 games with Washington. Perhaps telling is that the Senators took the opportunity to trade Shannon mid-season at the height of his hot streak. Following the trade, he batted .170 with the Philadelphia Athletics and would play only another 20 games in the majors in subsequent seasons.

OF: Emile Barnes (1927-1930), Wade Killefer (1907-1916), John Murray (1906-1917)

Red Barnes’ brief stay in the majors started well enough. He batted .305 for Washington in 1928, his first full season, but success would be fleeting. In his two remaining seasons he provided less than replacement value (-1.5 WAR).

Red Killefer was a speedy player who twice led the league in being hit by pitches. In 1915, his best season as a player, he collected 151 hits while playing strong defense in the outfield for Cincinnati. Killefer’s major league days were just the start of his baseball career. After playing, he spent many years as a coach, manager, and team executive in the minor leagues.

Red Murray was a deadball era star who unfortunately has very little name recognition today. By far the most productive all-Red outfielder, Murray was a starter in the outfield for seven of his ten years in the big leagues, leading the NL in homers in 1909 as a member of the Giants. In 1908 with the Cardinals, he finished in the top five in the major leagues in both home runs and stolen bases. In 1909, he did so again, becoming one of only three players to have accomplished this feat twice in the modern era. The other two have much more familiar names: Ty Cobb and Honus Wagner.

Oh, and if the team needs a broadcaster, who else but Walter Barber?

1.    Former major leaguer Manny Ramirez, instead of accepting his $20 million payment from the bankrupt Los Angeles Dodgers, bought said Dodgers and instituted a Steroid-For-Every-Player policy with the profits going to his Just Say I Know initiative for financial planning for ex billionaire major league owners.  He will then trade Vin Scully to FOX so that the network will have two announcers, (Joe Buck and Scully), who refuse to talk about anything baseball related during the FOX Saturday baseball broadcasts.

2.    The Pittsburgh Pirates, after seeing their final two catchers injured for the season, asked for and received league permission to install a temporary brick wall right behind home plate.  The Pittsburgh Parrot has been charged with retrieving the ball and opposition base runners will be allowed no more than two bases at one time.

GM Neal Huntington then traded all seven catchers to the American League thus saving the Pirates enough money to coax Manny Sanguillen out of retirement.   Manny, however, will play first base and Lyle Overbay will be sent to Panama.

3.    The Chicago Cubs swung a multi player deal with the Baltimore Orioles.  The Cubs, looking to increase their already formidable lead in strikeouts, traded Starlin Castro, Darwin Barney and Jeff Baker for Mark Reynolds, Luke Scott, Derrek Lee and Vlad Guerrero.

This gives them a chance to set an all time record for strikeouts in one season and the potential to lead the league in errors and base running mistakes. Guerrero is installed in centre field to mentor Alfonso Soriano on defense and Derrek Lee returns to first base ensuring any ground ball hit to the right side will get through for a hit.  Carlos Zambrano again enters anger management.

4.    The Atlanta Braves, deciding that they don’t have enough fleet footed center fielders who can’t hit traded for B.J. Upton.  They sent Martin Prado and Marvin Freeman to Tampa Bay for Upton and two players who can’t hit to be named later.  They now have an outfield who hit .220 collectively with no power.  Defense and pitching is everything and Chipper Jones promises that even with all his knee problems, he can still hit more homeruns than the rest of the team combined.  Atlanta have a pitching rich farm system which promises never to allow a run for the rest of the season. Their deal with the Houston Astros for Hunter Pence fell through (in this universe) as they realized that he may hit above .220 and might hit for power.

5. The Boston Red Sox and the New York Mets traded owners as the financial success of Boston is proving to be an embarrassment to major league baseball. Sox owner John Henry became fatigued with the burden of having too much money and fan support and asked new owner Fred Wilpon for investment advice.  They exchanged investment adviser information and Wilpon promised to sign aging players with attitude problems for exorbitant contracts. Commissioner Bud Selig declared the deal in the best interests of baseball and hired Jeffrey Loria as special negotiator for baseball in order to avoid non issues in the current labor negotiations.  Loria promised to give baseball another strike in renegotiating the basic player agreement to include a maximum player salary of $20,000.  Selig invoked the “best interests of baseball” clause citing the current economic crisis in Greece.

During the final days of the 1950 season, Robin Roberts carried the Philadelphia Phillies. The Whiz Kids had a seven game lead with nine to play. But suddenly, the Phillies were in Ebbets Field on the season’s final day needing a win to wrap up the title.

Critics claim that the Phillies wilted under intense Dodger pressure. But injuries to key players hampered the Phillies down the stretch. Roberts, the team’s salvation, started four times in eight days including the first game of the September 27 doubleheader at the New York Giants (no decision), the second game of the September 28 doubleheader also at the Polo Grounds (complete game 3-1 loss) and the pivotal October 1 finale, a 10-inning 4-1 masterpiece against the Dodgers wherein Roberts notched his 20th victory.

Before the Phillies finally salted away the pennant, Roberts had to survive the mother of all ninth inning rallies.

Here, as recalled by Roberts, is what happened. With the game tied 1-1, the Dodgers’ Cal Abrams walked. The next batter, Pee Wee Reese, twice attempted to bunt but failed. Then Reese singled to left field, “a real shot,” according to Roberts. Duke Snider walked to the plate. Roberts again expected a bunt. Instead, Snider singled sharply to center field. Because Richie Ashburn had a notoriously weak arm, the third base coach waved Abrams home. But Ashburn threw a perfect strike to Stan Lopata and, said Roberts, “Abrams was out by fifteen feet. It wasn’t even close.”

Now, however, Dodger runners were on second and third with Jackie Robinson up. Phillies manager Eddie Sawyer ordered Robinson intentionally walked. Next up came Carl Furillo, “a high-ball hitter”. Roberts fired an “eye-high” fast ball which Furillo popped up.

What he did: Von der Ahe owned the 19th century equivalent of the St. Louis Cardinals and might have been a century ahead of his time. Free spending and nicknamed “The Millionaire Sportsman,” von der Ahe didn’t know much about baseball, though he loved the game, once bragging he had the biggest diamond. He was a shrewd businessman and innovator, however, the first owner to sell souvenirs at his ballpark, cover the field when it rained, or build a ladies’ restroom. He also recognized the value of liquor sales, setting his ticket prices at 25 cents with the idea fans would spend leftover money on beer.

Von der Ahe’s methods worked to great effect, as he made $500,000 in 1885 alone (almost $12 million in 2010 dollars) and won four straight American Association championships. Eventually, he began to sell players to cover debts, and he lost his team in 1898 after a suspicious fire, dying of cirrhosis of the liver 15 years later. All the same, with his success and creativity in his prime, von der Ahe might have made a worthy contemporary decades later to frugal geniuses like Bill Veeck and Charlie Finley, only with George Steinbrenner’s budget.

Era he might have thrived in: Veeck and Finley did their best work before the advent of free agency in the 1970s and struggled to stay competitive thereafter as salaries ballooned. The thought here is that von der Ahe would have had deep enough pockets in the modern era to succeed where Wreck and Charlie O. fell short.

Why: It’s rare that owners are both innovative and free spending. Generally, tight budgets push management to find new ways to stay competitive: Moneyball for the Oakland A’s of recent years; exploding scoreboards, midgets, and Satchel Paige for Veeck; mustache-related bonuses, designated runners, and Paige as well (where didn’t he go?) for Finley.

Von der Ahe had that mindset, and one  can only wonder what gimmicks of his own he might have come up with as an owner in the 1960s and ’70s. Personally, I’d have liked to see if he attempted to pull off his own version of the ill-fated 10 cent beer night which turned a Cleveland Indians game into a drunken mess in 1974. Still, given his bankroll, I’m guessing von der Ahe’s  promotional hijinks would be strictly avocational, not a dire necessity for a man with deep pockets.

One thing’s for sure: I doubt von der Ahe would have been too upset by arbitrator Peter Seitz’s decision in 1975 to abrogate the Reserve Clause which introduced free agency and tripled salaries within five years. I’m guessing von der Ahe would have been one of the first to assemble the best team money could buy, and if he owned the Cardinals of the late ’70s, they might have been something more than lackluster. He could have been the National League equivalent of Steinbrenner.

It goes without saying that the details of von der Ahe’s personal life could be brighter, too, with stronger alcohol treatment options available in recent decades. A man who died at 61 and had to be supported by former player and manager Charlie Comiskey as he ran a saloon near the end might have had a better coda.

Any player/Any era is a Thursday feature here that looks at how a player might have done in an era besides his own.

Others in this series: Albert Pujols, Babe Ruth, Bad News Rockies, Barry Bonds, Billy Martin, Bob Caruthers, Bob Feller, Bob Watson, Bobby Veach, Carl Mays, Charles Victory Faust, Denny McLain, Dom DiMaggio, Eddie Lopat, Frank Howard, Fritz Maisel, Gavvy Cravath, George Case, George Weiss, Harmon Killebrew, Harry Walker, Home Run Baker, Honus Wagner, Ichiro Suzuki, Jack Clark, Jackie Robinson, Jimmy Wynn, Joe DiMaggio, Joe Posnanski, Johnny Antonelli, Johnny Frederick, Josh Hamilton, Ken Griffey Jr., Lefty Grove, Lefty O’Doul, Major League (1989 film), Matty Alou, Michael Jordan, Monte Irvin, Nate Colbert, Paul Derringer, Pete Rose, Prince Fielder, Ralph Kiner, Rick Ankiel, Rickey Henderson, Roberto Clemente, Rogers Hornsby, Sam Crawford, Sam Thompson, Sandy Koufax, Satchel Paige, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Stan Musial, Ted Williams, The Meusel Brothers, Ty Cobb, Wally Bunker, Willie Mays