Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers, The (2 page)

With a twenty-five-man roster there are 741 billion possible ways for a manager to pick a nine-man lineup. Actually, there are millions of times that many, but what I am saying exactly is that given a set of twenty-five players, there are 741,354,768,000 (741 billion, 354 million, 768 thousand) different ways to choose nine players from those twenty-five.

Once you have chosen the nine players, there are 362,880 options for the batting order, which is nine factorial. Combining these two questions into one, how many ways are there to make a nine-man batting order from a twenty-five-man lineup? The answer is 269 quadrillion—269,022,818,211,840,000 to be exact. One year, Casey Stengel used them all. No, actually, this is approximately the same as the number of seconds which would pass in ten billion years.

We haven’t yet considered the defensive alignment; if we allowed for that, the number of options would be … well, I don’t know, exactly, but trust me, it would be some very large number. For each of the 269 quadrillion possible lineups, there would be, in theory, 362,880 different defensive alignments.

The possible options would shrink considerably if we divided the roster into pitchers and position players. If you have a roster of fourteen position players and eleven pitchers, and you assume that only one pitcher will start, that reduces the options for the starting lineup from seven hundred billion to one billion. If you assume that only certain players can catch, only certain players can play the outfield, etc., that reduces the options further; heck, you can get down to a few million in no time.

Managers get hammered in barroom discussion because, out of the 269 quadrillion options for the batting order, they frequently don’t choose exactly the right one. You may wonder what computer analysis has to say about lineup selection, and I will tell you more about the subject a little later. But the first point to make, along that line, is that we can never
really
be sure what the optimal lineup is. The number of options is so large that it overpowers even the largest and most sophisticated computers. The only way to approach the problem is by whittling down the theoretically possible selections into those which seem reasonable, and then evaluating what seem to be the prime alternatives.

Cap Anson was not only larger than life, but louder, too. It would be the understatement of the week to say that Cap Anson was a natural leader. Anson was so big, so strong, so loud, and so forceful in his opinions that it would have been impossible for anyone else to manage the team while he was around. Even Albert Spalding, in time, would have been pushed aside by the younger man.

Adrian Constantine Anson was born in Marshalltown, Iowa, in 1852; he was the first white child born in that town, laid out and developed the previous year by Anson’s father. Henry Anson had settled in 1851 among the Pottawotami Indians in central Iowa.

Anson’s mother, according to his autobiography, stood five-foot-ten and a half and weighed over two hundred pounds. She died when Adrian was seven years old, leaving Anson to be raised by a huge, hulking braggart who attempted to drive the world around him with his voice. Baseball fever broke out in Marshalltown in the summer of 1866; the whole town seems to have been playing or watching baseball games every evening. The Marshalltown Stars developed into the best team in the state while Adrian was still young; his father and brother Sturgis were regulars, while Adrian, then fourteen, was on the second team. Adrian eventually made the team as a second baseman, and the Marshalltown Stars with the three Ansons claimed the Iowa state championship for several years.

One of the first professional teams west of the Mississippi was the Forest City Club of Rockford, Illinois, starring Albert Spalding. It isn’t a long distance from Forest City to Marshalltown, and in 1870 a match was arranged between the Marshalltown Stars and the Forest City Club. Forest City won 18 to 3 and then won a rematch 35 to 5. A fistfight between Henry Anson and Albert Spalding was narrowly averted.

After that game two members of the Marshall town team turned pro, joining Forest City. When Spalding and Ross Barnes left Forest City in 1871, joining Harry Wright in Boston, the Ansons were invited to try out for the vacancies on the Forest City roster. Henry Anson had a business to run—several businesses, actually—and he kept Sturgis Anson to help him, but allowed Adrian to sign with the professional team. Adrian was paid $66 a month.

Anson’s 1900 autobiography,
A Ballplayer’s Career
, is full of stories which may perhaps have acquired some character from frequent repetition. One story which I will repeat is that Clinton and Des Moines, Iowa, had a fierce baseball rivalry. They arranged a big match, and the Clinton Group offered Anson $50 to play the game for them. Dying his hair and staining his skin so he would not be recognized, Anson set off for Des Moines, but was intercepted at the railroad station by his father, who asked him what the devil he thought he was doing. Anson explained that there was fifty dollars at stake, but his father would not permit him to take part in the deception.

You know why I believe the story? Because Anson loved to dress up. Throughout his life, this was a constant theme: The man loved to put on funny clothes.

The National Association was organized in 1871 with the Forest City team as one of the nine original members. Without Spalding and Ross Barnes, Rockford was left as the association’s weakest team. The nineteen-year-old Anson played third base and hit very well (reportedly .352, although record-keeping in the Association was not reliable.) They called him “Baby” Anson, or “The Marshalltown Infant.”

Forest City wanted Anson back in 1872 at the same salary, but the Philadelphia Athletics offered him $1,250. Anson took the offer to Forest City and told them he would have to have at least $100 a month to stay with them. Losing money, they couldn’t do it, and Anson left for Philadelphia. Forest City disbanded, and Anson would not see his home town again for several years.

Anson loved Philadelphia, an exciting place for a country boy; he all but lived in the billiard parlors, and took boxing lessons from a championship boxer. In the summer of 1874 the Athletics and Red Stockings played an exhibition tour in England. Anson loved London, too—in fact, for a while he became quite fond of the night life. In a bar one night in 1875, back in Philadelphia, Anson got into a fight with a city cop and was hauled to the police station, covered with cuts and bruises. Fortunately, the president of the Athletics at that time was also the police commissioner.

Retiring to a bar to celebrate his release, he had several rounds and stumbled out the door, at which point he chanced upon a young woman whom he hoped to make Mrs. Anson. She expressed her opinion about men who drank to excess and got arrested in barroom brawls. Anson’s life was altered by that moment of humiliation. He stopped going to bars, never again drank excessively, and claimed that he was involved in only one fistfight in the rest of his life, that coming when Anson punched out a man on a streetcar who had insisted that baseball games were fixed.

The woman in question was Virginia Fiegal, the daughter of a Philadelphia hotel and restaurant owner. Anson had met her when she was quite young (twelve or thirteen) and began to court her soon after that; this apparently was not considered remarkable at the time.

As this courtship was progressing, in the summer of 1875, the National Association was disintegrating, and the National League was forming. Four key players from Boston, including Albert Spalding, and one key player from Philadelphia, Adrian Anson, jumped their teams and agreed to play in Chicago. Anson had originally wanted to play in Chicago, which was nearer his home than Philadelphia, and in the winter of 1875–1876 he agreed to join Spalding, Ross Barnes, Bob Addy, Paul Hines, Deacon White, Cal McVey, and others in Chicago; he was to be paid a reported $2,000.

When he told Virginia that he had signed to play in Chicago there was a scene. Anson assured her that he could purchase his release from his new contract, and traveled to Chicago to meet with William Hulbert, owner of the new White Stockings. He offered to purchase his release; Hulbert refused. Later in the winter he made another trip to Chicago for the same purpose, offering Hulbert $1,000; Hulbert still refused. Early in the season, Anson showed up at the park one day in a Prince Albert coat and striped trousers—the dress of an Eastern gentleman—and played the entire game in that garb.

Concluding that he was stuck in Chicago and had better make the best of it, Anson persuaded Virginia Fiegal that they should be married, and they were.

The White Stockings won the National League in its first season, 1876. At the end of the 1877 season Albert Spalding resigned as manager to devote full time to his sporting goods business, though he remained as part owner and continued to hang around the park. Bob Ferguson managed the team in 1878; he was older than Anson and probably smarter, but hard to get along with. By 1879 Anson was a veteran star at twenty-seven, his hellraising days far behind him.

He was named to manage the White Stockings in 1879. It was the role he was born to play. He became “Cap” Anson, the Captain. He scheduled daily workouts for his players, hard ones. When, in his first year as manager, Spalding came onto the field to express his opinion in a dispute with the umpires. Anson lit into Spalding with a string of obscenities. Spalding retreated.

Six foot tall, maybe six-one, Anson weighed 220 to 240 pounds and was always in perfect shape. He had a bullhorn voice which he used to berate and intimidate umpires, a major strategy of nineteenth-century ball clubs. (The umpires, attempting to work games solo, were subject at this time to constant abuse—tripping, bumping, shoving. It got worse before it got better.) Anson spoke his mind quickly and plainly, absolutely without fear; everybody knew where they stood with Anson. He worked hard himself, giving him the moral authority to insist on the same from his players. He was intelligent, strategically sound and innovative in a game which was still evolving rapidly and therefore had fluid strategy. He was a good judge of ballplayers.

The team improved in 1879, and in 1880 added Mike “King” Kelly, who was to become the most popular player of the early 1880s, and Anson’s rival in marquee value. In 1880 the White Sox returned to the top of the National League, posting a 67–17 record. Backed by Spalding’s wealth, the White Stockings prospered throughout the early ’80s. They won the National League again in 1881, and won a third time in 1882. In 1882 the White Stockings played a postseason series against the Cincinnati team of the American Association, a series sometimes listed as the first World Series. They played two games, and split.

At a baseball clinic in his hometown of Marshalltown in 1883, Anson saw a young man named Billy Sunday and signed him to play with the White Stockings. Sunday was a decent player, a good base stealer, and, at the time, quite a hellraiser himself. We come then to the events which, as time passes, grow ever larger in the modern image of Cap Anson. In the early 1880s there were a few black players playing professional baseball. Cap Anson was outspoken in his opposition to allowing blacks to play in the majors.

Anson’s autobiography does not discuss his role in drawing the color line, but does discuss at considerable length his relationship with a black minstrel named Clarence Duval, whom the team kept as a mascot. He refers to Duval casually as a “little darkie,” a “coon,” and a “no account nigger.” He quotes Duval as saying things like, “Spec’s you’s a’ right, Cap’n,” and tells that on joining the team “Duval was taken out, given a bath, against which he fought with tooth and nail.” They treated Duval, in short, exactly as one would treat a dog.

The Toledo team of the American Association (a major league team) had a catcher named Moses Fleetwood Walker, a black gentleman, a college graduate, well spoken and well liked.

On July 20, 1884, in Toledo, the White Stockings were scheduled to play an exhibition game against Toledo. The Chicago team secretary wrote a letter to Charlie Morton, Toledo manager, reminding him of Anson’s feelings about black ballplayers. They thought that they had an agreement that Walker would not play.

When the Chicago team got to the ballpark, however, Walker was in uniform. Anson refused to play the game unless “that nigger” was removed from the field. The Toledo management told Anson that he could play against Walker or go home. Anson played the game—but spoke out loudly against it.

This incident is frequently cited as the beginning of baseball’s color line—in fact, the version of it usually printed until a few years ago was that Toledo had knuckled under, and Anson had successfully driven Walker from the field. In any case, the engine of discrimination was in motion. Several leagues in the following months passed covenants banning “colored” players from participation. The Toledo team dropped out of the American Association in 1885.

The situation was unresolved. Black players were banned from some leagues, but continued to play in others. There were no blacks in the National League or the American Association, the “major” leagues, but no one knew for sure whether or not he could sign a black player if he chose. Anson resumed his career.

In the spring of 1885 Anson brought his Cubs to Sulphur Dell, Tennessee, for three weeks of spring training. Although teams had gone south for training for many years, even before the beginning of the National League, Anson apparently pushed spring training to new levels of organization, or something, and so is often credited (or miscredited) with having invented spring training.

Teams in the mid-1880s still relied heavily on one starting pitcher, and the decline of the Chicago team in 1883–1884 can be traced to the decline of their number one pitcher, Larry Corcoran. In late 1884 Corcoran was supplanted by a hard-throwing sensation named John Clarkson, who won 53 games in 1885. The White Sox returned to the top of the league with a sensational 87–25 record.

Cap Anson, as a player: He stood with his heels together, very erect at the plate, and swung perhaps the heaviest bat in history. Most of the time he allowed the first pitch to go by; some accounts insist that he almost never swung until there were two called strikes on him, although the advantage in this would be hard even for Ted Williams to explain. He had huge, powerful hands.

Anson as described by Robert Smith: “Anson was six feet two, an erect, square-shouldered, lop-eared man, tightly muscled, of a slightly dour countenance. His eyes were deep and his gaze level and clear. His mouth was firm, his nose curved and badly proportioned, like something a child might draw. There was a fierceness in his nature which took the form of a stubborn honesty and independence, a grim clinging to prejudice, a tendency to express his mind loudly and directly, and a desire to go his own way—and have his own way.”

When Anson thought that an umpire had done him wrong, or failing that when he thought an umpire could be intimidated, he roared at the umpires with his remarkable foghorn voice.

He bullied anybody he could bully, starting with the opposition; he would stand on the sidelines and berate the opposition pitcher in loud and offensive language. He was “an acknowledged rough,” said Henry Chadwick, and his influence on the conduct of the game was not a healthy one—but he had put together the best team in the National League, and that as he saw it was his job.

The St. Louis Browns, under Charles Comiskey, had emerged as the powerhouse of the rival league, the American Association. The difference between the Browns and the White Sox was that the Browns were even rougher. The two teams arranged to play a series to determine the 1885 World Championship, as had been done in 1884. St. Louis probably won the series, but the second game of the series was stopped in the sixth inning by fights on the field and a near-riot in the stands. The Chicago papers claimed the unfinished game as a victory for Chicago, and thus claimed that the series had ended in a tie.

That argument roared for a year, and grew hotter when both Chicago and St. Louis repeated as champions in 1886. Anson had a great year, driving in 147 runs and hitting .371—but then, Anson always had a great year; the only higher average belonged to his utility superstar, King Kelly, who hit .388. Chris Von der Ahe, owner of the St. Louis team, challenged the White Stockings, by now also called the Colts, to settle the question of the championship once and for all. “We’ll play your team,” Anson told Von der Ahe, “on one condition—that the winner take every penny of the gate.”