Author: Bill Grimes

I'm from Chicago. I worked in broadcast journalism for much of the 1970's and 80's. In 1990 I became a litigation consultant, retiring in 2017. Around 2005 I recall flipping through the sports section of the newspaper coming across "On this day in baseball history Willie Mays hit his 600th home run." I enjoyed the one-liners, but I wanted more. I wanted a story. I took my news reporting skills and started researching and telling baseball stories, one for every day of the year. TodayinBaseball.com is the result.

Sep 28: RBI from the grave

SEPTEMBER 28, 1930 | CINCINNATI, OHIO – On this date in 1930 the Chicago Cubs‘ Hack Wilson drove in his 189th and 190th runs of the season to set the single season RBI record that stands to this day – more than 80 years later. His RBI helped the Cubs beat the Cincinnati Reds 13-11 on the last day of the season.

Wilson was such a prolific run producer that he could deliver from the grave. In 1999, more than 50 years after his death, it was discovered that one run batted in back in 1930 had been incorrectly credited to another Cub player. It should have gone to Wilson, so the official record stands at 191.

Wilson didn’t look the part of a slugger, he was 5′ 6″, 190 lbs, but he was such a prolific run producer that he drove an extra run in long after he stopped playing, in fact long after he died.

The single season RBI record is seldom mentioned as one that will never be broken, but no one has come close in decades, in fact the closest anyone has come was the year after the record was set. The closest anyone has come in the last 50 years was Manny Ramirez‘ 165 RBI in 1999 – hardly a serious threat.

Here are the top ten, eight of which are from the 1930’s, none more recently than 1937:

1. Hack Wilson 1930 Cubs – 191
2. Lou Gehrig 1931 Yankees – 184
3. Hank Greenberg 1937 Tigers – 183
4. Jimmie Foxx 1938 Red Sox – 175
5. Lou Gehrig 1927 Yankees – 175
6. Lou Gehrig 1930 Yankees – 174
7. Babe Ruth 1921 Yankees – 171
8. Hank Greenberg 1935 Tiger – 170
9. Chuck Klein 1930 Phillies – 170
10. Jimmie Foxx 1932 Red Sox – 169

Contributing sources:
RBI Leaders, BASEBALL-REFERENCE 
More on: Hack Wilson

Sep 27: Browns fade to black

SEPTEMBER 27,  1953 | ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI – Befitting their history, the St. Louis Browns lost the final game they ever played on this date in 1953. Their loss to the Chicago White Sox in 11 innings was the 100th of the season. They left St. Louis that winter for Baltimore to become the Orioles in 1954.

Until the team moved to Baltimore, where they remain, the franchise had a somewhat vagabond history. It was established in 1901 in Milwaukee as the Brewers – one of the charter franchises of the American League. The Brewers, not to be confused with the current Milwaukee Brewers, stayed a year. The team moved to St. Louis for the 1902 season and became the Browns, a name relinquished a few years earlier by the St. Louis Cardinals.

Confused? Suffice it to say, the Browns are now the Orioles and in Baltimore. The Brewers, who were the Seattle Pilots for one year, have been in Milwaukee since 1970, and the Cardinals remain where they’ve always been – St. Louis (unless you’re talking about the football Cardinals, but that’s a story for TODAYinFOOTBALL). And, oh, the Baltimore Orioles of 1901 – not to be confused with the current Orioles – moved to New York in 1903 and became the Highlanders (today’s Yankees).

Contributing sources:
September 27, 1953 box score/play-by-play
MLB team histories
Major League Baseball

Sep 24-Fixing the fix

SEPTEMBER 24, 1920 | NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK – An editorial in the New York Times on this date in 1920 admonished Major League Baseball to clean up its act in the wake of the Black Sox scandal. The message reminded baseball of “the financial value of honesty.” A few days earlier prosecutors in Chicago lent credence to rumors that several Chicago White Sox players took money to intentionally not play up to their abilities during the 1919 World Series. The New York Times editorial almost exactly a year after the ill-fated World Series reminded baseball of its own inflexibility with gambling when the National League was in its infancy in the late 1800s:

“Prompt action at almost the very beginning of National League history removed a group of players who made a business of ‘throwing’ games, and ever since then the average American has been as sure of the purity of the national sport as he was of the corruption of national politics, and as proud.”

The Times went on to say that by cracking down on gambling years earlier, baseball “realized that big profits and huge salaries” were only assured if the public had no suspicion games were fixed.

Despite eight members of the 1919 White Sox eventually being acquitted of taking money to lose the World Series, mainly because key evidence was lost, all eight were banned from baseball by commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis August 3, 1921.

Source:
New York Times, September 24, 1920

Sept 23: “Base-ball” evolves

SEPTEMBER 23, 1845 | NEW YORK, NEW YORK – The Knickerbocker Base Ball Club of New York published the first known set of rules for the game of “base-ball” on this date in 1845. The club’s goal, under the leadership of Alexander Cartwright, was to codify and differentiate “base-ball” from similar games, such as “rounders,” “townball and “The New York Game.” 

Serious baseball historians, such as Leonard Koppett, author of Koppett’s Concise History of Major League Baseball and John Thorn, author of Baseball in the Garden of Eden, The Secret History of the Early Game, are reluctant to call anyone “the father” of baseball, or any place its “birthplace.” Baseball wasn’t invented. It evolved. And historians agree, the game was not invented by Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown, New York.

It’s amazing how many rules laid down by the Knickerbocker Club more than 150 years ago remain with the game today, for example:

  • Four bases laid out in a diamond.
  • Bases are approximately 90 feet apart.
  • Balls hit outside of first or 3rd base are foul.
  • Three “hand” outs per inning.
  • Teams play an equal number of “hands,” or innings.
  • The striker (batter) must swing and miss three times to strike out.
  • On the third swinging strike, the “striker” (batter) may run to first if the catcher does not catch the ball before it hits the ground.
  • Runners may be put out by being tagged or forced.
    • A runner cannot be put out by “soaking” (hitting them with a thrown ball).
    • Throwing at a runner is prohibited.

Here are some differences between the Knickerbocker rules and today’s:

  • Foul balls were not considered strikes
  • The game continues until one team scores 21 “aces” (runs), (but only ends after an equal number of hands (innings) have been played.)
  • The ball must be pitched underhand.
  • A “striker” (batter) is out if a fair or foul ball is caught on the fly or the first bounce. All base runners may advance on a fair ball caught on the first bounce.
  • There are no called strikes.

Contributing sources:
Knickerbocker Rules
Koppett’s Concise History of Major League Baseball, by Leonard Koppett, 1998, Carroll & Graf Publishers, New York.
Baseball in the Garden of Eden, The Secret History of the Early Game, by John Thorn, 2011, Simon & Schuster
Encyclopedia Britannica-Baseball

Sep 22: Rumors of a fix

SEPTEMBER 22, 1920 | CHICAGO, ILLINOIS – By the fall of 1920 rumors that the Chicago White Sox threw the 1919 World Series were rampant, but nobody was in trouble, until today. A prosecutor in Chicago heard enough grand jury testimony on this date in 1920 to say the 1919 World Series between the Sox and the Cincinnati Reds “was not played on the square.” Assistant State’s Attorney Hartley Replogle went on to say, “From five to seven players on the White Sox are involved.” Replogle wouldn’t say what the evidence was, but it later surfaced that nine “Black” Sox took money from gamblers in exchange for intentionally losing World Series games. Underdog Cincinnati went on to win the series 5 games to 3 (the series was best of nine in those days).

Eight White Sox players were indicted and put on trial in 1921:
Joe (Shoeless Joe) Jackson
Eddie Cicotte
George (Buck) Weaver
Fred McMullin
Charles Risberg
Oscar (Happy) Felsh
Arnold (Chick) Gandil
Claude Williams

Thanks to the “mysterious” disappearance of incriminating evidence against them, all were acquitted. Baseball’s first Commissioner, former federal judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis, however, wanted to make a dramatic statement to rid the game of any hint of gambling so he banned the players for life. None ever played major league baseball again.

Over the years, supporters of Shoeless Joe Jackson and Buck Weaver tried to clear their names. Jackson admitted taking money but denied throwing any games.  Buck Weaver denied taking any money or letting up during the Series, but Judge Landis banned him for not speaking up about what he knew. Their names were never cleared.

CONTRIBUTING SOURCES:
New York Times, September 23, 1920, Page 17, “Says 1919 World’s Series was fixed,”

The Shoeless Joe Jackson Society
Joe Jackson Grand Jury testimony