I didn't find much in researching early
twentieth-century Upper Valley baseball teams. But I did find a
great story about a Vermont baseball team during this era.
By 1905, the National League and the
American League were well established as the two major leagues in the
United States. In 1903, the first World Series was played between
the Boston Americans and the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Americans won,
and this gave much needed prestige to the newly formed American
League.
As powerful as the National League and
the American League were, there were still some baseball leagues in
America that remained independent. These “Outlaw Leagues”
featured mostly college students, former college students, and former
big-league players. The Northern League was made up of three Vermont
teams, from Rutland, Burlington, and Barre-Montpelier, and
Plattsburgh from New York. These teams played played in front of
thousands of Vermont baseball fans who could never have traveled to
the closest big league games in Boston or New York.
Fans traveled to the games by train,
and streetcar spurs took them right to the ballfields. The
Barre-Montpelier ballfield was built by the streetcar company, which
knew that it would make a fortune on fares from the railroad station
to the ballfields. Railroad lines also made money on the baseball
games. The Rutland Railroad had stations in Rutland, Burlington, and
Barre-Montpelier, so it was possible for fans from all three towns to
ride the train to the games. The railroads often put additional cars
on the trains for the extra passengers going to the game.
In 1905, the Burlington team had a
black shortstop. William Clarence Matthews, from Selma, Alabama, was
a Harvard graduate who had joined the Northern League club hoping to
eventually in the Major Leagues. Matthews played baseball when he was
at Harvard, and was considered by McClure Magazine to be the best
player on the team. An article entitled “The College Athlete” in
the July 1905 issue of McClure's described Matthews as a hard-working
college graduate who had repeatedly refused offers of $40 a week plus
room and board to play on a semi-professional baseball team,
preferring to keep his place on the college team and working his way
through college by working in hotels and railroad cars. The article
also says that Matthews “worked his way through the university,
practically completing four years' work in three, and graduated with
a year's work in Harvard law school.
Many college students played baseball
during the summers under an assumed name, thus preserving their
amateur status and their places on their college teams. There were
no electronic systems, paper trails, social security numbers, or
proofs of identification or US citizenship that had to be checked
before a person received pay. These college kids tried out for a
team, gave an assumed name, and they were good to go. This would
have been impossible for Matthews to pull off even if he had wanted
to, because he was black, and there were very few black college
students, especially in Vermont.
Matthews presence on the Harvard team
did cause some hassles and racial strife during the baseball season,
most notably during their trips to southern colleges. During
Matthews' first two years playing baseball, the team kept him out of
a few games due to the other teams' refusals to play baseball with a
black player. In 1902, they canceled their trip south altogether.
They, did, however, make it as far as
Washington, DC to play Georgetown. At first, Georgetown said they
wouldn't play Harvard if they had a black man on the team. At the
last moment, however, the other school relented and agreed to play.
Their captain, on the other hand, Sam Apperius, also from Selma,
Alabama, refused to play on the same field as a black man, and didn't
play in the game.
After graduating from Harvard,
Matthews decided to join an Outlaw League in the hopes of making a
big enough name for himself to be accepted into a major league club.
The Outlaw Leagues were not bound by the “Gentleman's Agreement”
that white players and black players would not play on the same team.
Matthews was hoping that he would play well enough that he could
break the color barrier.
The 1905 Northern League season began
with the club owners “laying down the law” abou tie,t some habits
the fans had enjoyed in past seasons that were not going to be
tolerated that season. They decided that “betting at Athletic Park
(Burlington) shall be forbidden. No more excited excursionists with
large roles of filthy lucre prominently displayed will be permitted
to shove their tainted money in the faces of inoffensive fans.
Profanity and objectionable language will also be eliminated.” In
his article, “College Boys and Boozers”, Karl Lindholm of
Middlebury College tells the tale of good intentions gone bad. He
writes that, “anticipation was betrayed by reality. Betting was
rife at Northern League games, fans cursed and misbehaved, league
rules were honored mostly in the breach, and umpiring was a
disaster.”
Season tickets to Northern League
games in 1905 cost $6.00. Grandstand tickets cost .10 and .15, with
cushioned seats behind home plate going for .25. The game schedule
consisted of 120 games, 60 home and 60 away, with each team playing
10 games in all the other teams' ballparks. Lindholm says in his
article that the teams agreed to adhere to a $650 a week salary
restriction, but that must mean total salary expenditure per team,
because that is a lot of money a week per player, for a team from
Vermont. Calculated for inflation, $650 equals a little more than
$17,000 in 2013. They agreed to maintain a 12 player roster, not to
sign any player from a National Agreement Club, and to play out the
whole season.
Rivalry between the three Vermont
teams was fierce that year. By August 1 the four teams were in a
four-way tie, each within three games of the lead. Often the success
of the team depended on how many of the league rules the owners were
willing to break to get the best players. The Burlington team was
owned by George Whitney, a well known gambler whose equal passions
were horse-races and baseball. Whitney was heir to Eli Whitney,
cotton gin inventor. George Whitney was the Steinbrenner of his day,
having no problem with breaking whatever rule suited him to get and
keep a player on his team. It absolutely suited his style to have a
black player on his team. According to Lindholm, “Players on the
Burlington team came and went with a frequency that landed Whitney in
hot water with the league. He defended himself in an August 5 league
meeting against the charge that he was carrying more than 12 players
by claiming he was unaware of the bylaws. He argued that he was
signing National Agreement players during the season because everyone
else was doing it and it was a stupid rule anyway.”
It is true that all of the teams were
signing National Agreement players. The presence of these players on
the various teams was a game-maker as to which team was winning. The
fortunes of the teams depended on the health, loyalty and performance
of the stars of the teams. These players were called “kangaroos”
because they jumped out of their contracts with one team to go play
on another team. Burlington had three contract-jumpers on the team.
Doc (Willard) Hazleton was born in
Strafford in 1841. He jumped contracts from so many different
National League Agreement teams that the National League banned him
for life. After that, the only leagues he could play on in were
“Outlaw” Leagues. In 1905, he was the team manager of the
Burlington team, and also played first base and batted cleanup. He
was the best hitter on the team. Rube Vickers was another notorious
“kangaroo”. He had defected from the Holyoke team of the
Connecticut League, leaving for Vermont in the dead of night, when he
was slated to be starting pitcher for Holyoke in the next day's game.
Jimmy Wiggs was the other pitcher for Burlington. The “Sporting
News” stated that Wiggs “held the record par excellence for
contract jumping”. Wiggs had started the year on the National
League Brooklyn team, jumped that contract for Altoona, Pennsylvania,
went back to Brooklyn, and left Brooklyn for Burlington – all
before July. He stayed with Burlington for the rest of the season,
winning 11 games and losing 5.
Rutland's ace pitcher jumped his
contract three days before opening day, and that team had to scramble
to find a replacement. The team brought on two pitchers who would be
playing under assumed names, Cammetz and Minihan. Cammetz was really
Howie Camnitz, who had been around, most recently with Pittsburgh and
Toledo. Minihan was Eddie “Cotton” Minihan, arriving in Rutland
from Toledo, destined to leave Rutland for Cincinnati. Camnitz was
supposed to be an ace, and would go on to have an illustrious Major
League career, but he could not get it done in Rutland. Lindholm
quotes the Rutland Herald, “The jumping wonder from Toledo was a
wild as a hawk, before a record crowd of nearly 3,000 in Burlington,
walking seven batters, hitting three, and tossing a wild pitch.”
Rutland let Camnitz go in mid-season, infuriating Minihan. Minihan
continued as Rutland's pitcher, doing a spectacular job and leading
the team within three games of the lead, when he jumped, with only
two weeks to go in the season. Having lost its two pitchers, Rutland
was out of the running.
Plattsburgh also had a “kangaroo”
pitcher. By some accounts, Arthur “Doc” Hillebrand was the best
pitcher in the league. Hillebrand had signed a contract with
Washington, but he really wanted to play for Pittsburgh. For
whatever reason, in the summer of 1905, he was playing on the
Northern League Plattsburgh team. For a few months, Hillebrand's
skill on the mound brought Plattsburgh within three games of the
league, then Hillebrand jumped – to an opportunity to play for
Pittsburgh. Although he offered to give back the advance money
Washington had given him, the National Commission wouldn't let him
play for Pittsburgh or Washington. Instead they banned him from
major league baseball for life.
The Barre-Montpelier Hyphens did not
have any standout jumpers on their team. What they did have was
several college players who played under an assumed name so that they
wouldn't lose their amateur standing and their place on their college
teams. The Hyphens also had several former college players trying to
make a name for themselves as a segue-way into the major leagues.
The constantly switching loyalties of
the jumpers gave plenty of drama to the 1905 season. Umpiring
debacles added fuel to an already volatile situation. There was more
than one fistfight over a bad call. City newspapers rated the
umpiring in their accounts of the games. In a Burlington vs Rutland
game, a Rutland player reacted to an umpire's call with such
violently foul-mouthed language that he was thrown out of the game.
When the player refused to leave the field, the ump called the game
with Burlington winning. At the end of the season, the directors of
the Northern League eliminated two of Burlington's wins from the
totals of the season, against Rutland and the Hyphens, because the
umpiring had been so unfair.
