Turn of the Century Baseball in Vermont

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.