Baseball Hall of Fame Lives

Honus Wagner, Part One: Some Yellow in Him The greatest shortstop of his era makes the last out of the first World Series, and a Boston writer questions his courage. On October 13, 1903, Honus Wagner struck out to end the first modern World Series. Six days later, The Sporting News printed a Boston writer’s verdict that “Old Honus has some yellow in him.” In the same paragraph, the writer praised Wagner’s fielding and base running. This episode follows Wagner from a coal town outside Pittsburgh to five minor-league towns in the single summer of 1895. One of them was Adrian, Michigan, home of the Page Fence Giants, where a 1930 recollection raises a question the record can’t answer. From there it goes to Louisville, to Pittsburgh, and to a 1903 Series lost to a pitching staff that fell apart. It ends in October 1909 against Ty Cobb. The reporter The Sporting News sent to Game One saw Wagner walk over and shake Cobb’s hand. In This Episode The $35 telegram and the late-night coal train to Steubenville Adrian, 1895: George Wilson, Vasco Graham, Bud Fowler, and the “colored battery” recollection Ed Doheny’s breakdown during the 1903 World Series The “yellow” charge, word for word, from The Sporting News Cobb in 1909: “I have never seen him play, but… he must be a wonder” By The Numbers 1 for 14: Wagner in the last four games of 1903 .333 to .231: Wagner against Cobb in the 1909 Series 6: stolen bases in the 1909 Series, a record for 58 years 29,264: paid attendance at Game One, 1909 Sources The Sporting News (October 17 and 24, 1903; October 14 and 21, 1909; December 14, 1955); A.D. Suehsdorf, “Honus Wagner’s Rookie Year, 1895,” The National Pastime (1987); Jan Finkel, SABR BioProject; Moments of Joy and Heartbreak (SABR); Nineteenth Century Stars (SABR). Disclaimer: Baseball Hall of Fame Lives is an independent production and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Keywords: Honus Wagner, Flying Dutchman, Pittsburgh Pirates, 1903 World Series, 1909 World Series, Ty Cobb, Page Fence Giants, Bud Fowler, Deacon Phillippe, baseball history, Hall of Fame 1936

Walter Johnson, Part One: The Train to Washington Short description: The greatest pitcher on the worst team, from a Kansas farm to the night he thought his chance was gone. October 8, 1924. Walter Johnson has just lost his second World Series game in five days. He boards a train home with his youngest son on his shoulder, trying not to cry. After eighteen seasons, it looks like he'll never win a World Series game. This episode tells who was on that train: a Kansas farm boy who learned to pitch in the California oil fields, and the "Weiser Wonder" who demanded a return ticket before he'd sign. Then the pitcher who carried a hopeless Washington franchise for most of two decades without ever arguing a call. Built from The Sporting News, the wire services, a newspaper column written under his wife's name, and SABR's history of Griffith Stadium. Where Johnson's own memories don't match the record, this episode says so. In This Episode The Weiser depot, the cigar-store offer, and "you want to see things" Why Johnson's memory of his debut can't be entirely right Three shutouts in four days, and 38 one-to-nothing wins Hazel Johnson's column after the Game One loss His mother, in the stands for the first time By The Numbers 1913: 36–7, 1.14 ERA, 11 shutouts Ten straight 20-win seasons, 1910–1919 1924: 23–7, league MVP Game One, 1924: 12 innings, 12 strikeouts, lost 4–3 Sources: The Sporting News (1924, 1946); United News wire (Oct. 11, 1924); Philadelphia Inquirer (Oct. 5, 1924); SABR BioProject, "Walter Johnson" by Charles Carey; A Palace in the Nation's Capital: Griffith Stadium (SABR, 2021). Baseball Hall of Fame Lives is an independent production and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Keywords: Walter Johnson, Big Train, Washington Senators, Griffith Stadium, 1924 World Series, Clark Griffith, Weiser Idaho, Hall of Fame 1936, deadball era, baseball history

SHORT DESCRIPTION In 1920 he out-homered fourteen of the fifteen other teams. He made everyone around him rich, and was never allowed to manage a single game. SHOW NOTES In his first season in New York, Babe Ruth hit fifty-four home runs. The next-best hitter in the American League hit nineteen. Ruth hit more home runs by himself than fourteen of the other fifteen entire teams in baseball — and he did it in the same year eight White Sox were accused of selling the World Series. One of those stories is why the sport survived the other. This episode is the New York years and what came after: the records from 1921 that still stand, the ballpark his crowds paid for, the Columbia laboratory that measured his eyes, the suspensions, and the 1925 collapse that the papers turned into a joke about hot dogs and that was almost certainly something else. Then the comeback nobody expected — six seasons averaging fifty home runs at ages thirty-one to thirty-six — the called shot at Wrigley, and the long decline. On the called shot, the episode uses what The Sporting News actually printed five days later: the finger-counting, wiping his hands, and pointing toward the distant bleachers. Then it gives the reasons to doubt it, including Charlie Root's denial and Ruth's own answer when asked — "It's in the papers, isn't it?" And underneath all of it, the thing that never healed: after Miller Huggins died in 1929, Ruth asked to manage. The Yankees never seriously considered him, and no team ever did. The most famous man in American sport never managed a major league game. Part two of two. IN THIS EPISODE 1920: fifty-four home runs, and a sport in crisis Records from 1921 that have stood for over a century What Columbia University found when they tested him Landis, the lost captaincy, and the umpires he fought The bellyache heard round the world, and what it probably was The $5,000 fine that stuck, and the gym in Manhattan Why Gehrig may have been better in 1927 Helen's death, Claire, and the 500th home run The job he asked for and never got October 1, 1932: what the trade paper printed, and why it still isn't settled Three home runs in Pittsburgh at forty, and then nothing August 16, 1948 BY THE NUMBERS 54 home runs in 1920 — 35 more than the runner-up 177 runs, 119 extra-base hits, 457 total bases in 1921 — none ever matched .393 in 1923; 60 home runs in 1927 1926–31: an average of 50 home runs, 155 RBI and a .354 average 714 career home runs; the last three in one afternoon at forty Dead at 53 SOURCES The Sporting News, October 6, 1932 and August 25, 1948 (the seven-page Babe Ruth section, including Frederick G. Lieb's obituary). SABR BioProject. The New York Times, August 1948. Archives accessed through the Society for American Baseball Research. DISCLAIMER Baseball Hall of Fame Lives is an independent production and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. KEYWORDS Babe Ruth, New York Yankees, called shot, 1932 World Series, Charlie Root, Lou Gehrig, Miller Huggins, Yankee Stadium, 60 home runs, Boston Braves, Cooperstown, baseball history

SHORT DESCRIPTION He arrived in Boston as the throw-in on a three-player deal. Six years later he was sold for more than double the record — and demanded a cut. SHOW NOTES On September 10, 1918, twenty-five thousand people sat in Fenway Park waiting for game five of the World Series while both teams refused to leave their clubhouses. The owners had cut the players' shares by roughly three quarters. The commissioners had refused to meet them, then stood them up to go to the theater. When the president of the American League finally arrived at the ballpark, he was drunk and in tears. The players went out and played, an hour late — and in December were told that owing to their disgraceful conduct, they would not receive their World Series emblems. One of the men in that clubhouse had just finished the strangest season any player has ever had: Babe Ruth, pitching every fourth day and playing the field in between, leading both leagues in slugging while going thirteen and seven on the mound. This episode is Boston: the Baltimore waterfront and the reform school he entered at seven and left at nineteen; the $2,900 he cost the Red Sox as the throw-in on a three-player sale; four years as one of the best left-handers alive; the July afternoon he quit the team and went home; the 1918 strike; and the sale to New York. It's built almost entirely from what was printed at the time — including The Sporting News of January 1920, which took Harry Frazee's public explanation apart under the subheading "Figures Explode Frazee's Alibi," and predicted the disintegration of the Red Sox seventy years before anyone invented a curse to explain it. Part one of two. IN THIS EPISODE Declared incorrigible at seven, St. Mary's until nineteen, and Brother Matthias "Dunn's babe," and a $2,900 line in a three-player deal Twenty-three wins and a 1.75 ERA in 1916 — and punching an umpire in 1917 May 6, 1918: a pitcher batting sixth at first base The day he quit, the shipyard that also wanted him to pitch, and the 2 a.m. return The World Series strike, and the emblems the players never got Twenty-nine and two-thirds scoreless innings — the record he was proudest of "Twenty thousand a year or I quit," announced in the fall of 1919 The sale, the price list, and Barrow telling Frazee he was making a mistake What The Sporting News said about the alibi Harry Frazee, and why most of what you've heard about him is false BY THE NUMBERS $2,900 — his share of the 1914 sale from Baltimore 1916: 23–12, 1.75 ERA, nine shutouts (still the AL record for a left-hander) 1918: .300 average, 11 home runs, .555 slugging — the highest in either league — and 13–7 pitching 29⅔ consecutive scoreless World Series innings, a record for 43 years $1,108.45 — the 1918 winners' share, the lowest ever paid a champion Over $100,000 — the 1920 sale, roughly double the previous record SOURCES The Sporting News, September 19, 1918; January 8 and 15, 1920; August 25, 1948. "When Boston Still Had the Babe: The 1918 World Champion Red Sox" (SABR), especially the chapters by Allan Wood, Dan Levitt and Glenn Stout. SABR BioProject. Archives accessed through the Society for American Baseball Research. DISCLAIMER Baseball Hall of Fame Lives is an independent production and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. KEYWORDS Babe Ruth, Boston Red Sox, Harry Frazee, 1918 World Series, players strike, Ed Barrow, Harry Hooper, St. Mary's Industrial School, curse of the Bambino, Yankees, baseball history, Cooperstown

EPISODE TITLE Ty Cobb, Part Two: The Man Who Invented Him SHORT DESCRIPTION A forged diary sat in the Hall of Fame for eleven years. The man who wrote it also invented most of what you know about Ty Cobb. SHOW NOTES In 2009, after an FBI investigation, a Ty Cobb diary that Major League Baseball had bought and donated to the National Baseball Hall of Fame was determined to be a forgery, written by the sportswriter who ghosted Cobb's autobiography. It was the smallest thing Al Stump did. Stump spent fifty years as a freelance writer and never broke through. Then, in 1961, he got the Cobb assignment — and five months after Cobb died, he published a magazine piece inventing a shotgun, a drunken deathbed, and a man beaten to death in a Detroit alley. Nineteen years later he was selling Cobb's possessions, including a shotgun. The Franklin County coroner's report says a pistol. Detroit's autopsy records contain no body. The eyewitness quoted in his 1994 biography died in 1956. And the record shows Stump spent no more than a few weeks with Cobb in total. This episode also follows how the invention became the standard account: reprinted in yearbooks and anthologies, then absorbed in 1984 by a careful academic biography that everyone else went on to cite. And it covers what got buried underneath: the hospital Cobb built in Royston in 1950, the scholarship foundation he created in 1953 and left a quarter of his estate — more than $21 million awarded since — and his request that the students never be told whose money it was. It refuses the easy correction, too. Cobb was violent, his violence fell hardest on Black men, and none of that needed inventing. Part two of two. IN THIS EPISODE The forged diary in Cooperstown Cobb Memorial Hospital and the Ty Cobb Educational Foundation What he told the Associated Press about integration in 1952 Who Al Stump was, and how little time he actually spent with Cobb True magazine, December 1961, and the birth of the legend How a fabrication became the standard biography The shotgun that never existed — and the one Stump sold The killing that left no body, the Luger that wasn't there, Ted Williams's three-word answer Fifty to a hundred forged letters in Cobb's green ink — and the duplicate that exposed him Barry Halper, the 1999 auction, and how the diary reached the Hall of Fame Why the correction can't go too far SOURCES "The Georgia Peach: Stumped by the Storyteller" by William R. Cobb, SABR, 2010. Franklin County coroner's report, August 9, 1905. The Sporting News, July 26, 1961. Sports Illustrated, 1995. Ty Cobb Educational Foundation. SABR BioProject. Mark Armour's review of Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty. DISCLAIMER Baseball Hall of Fame Lives is an independent production and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. KEYWORDS Ty Cobb, Al Stump, Barry Halper, baseball myths, forged memorabilia, Cooperstown, Hall of Fame, sports history, Royston Georgia, baseball biography, SABR