Notes #422 — A Win-Win Series

                             NOTES FROM THE SHADOWS OF COOPERSTOWN
                                           Observations from Outside the Lines
                                     By Two Finger Carney (carneya6@adelphia.net)
 

#422                                                                                                              OCTOBER 29, 2007
                                              A WIN-WIN SERIES
 

            It was not the World Series I had hoped for, rooted for. The Cubs fell early, then the Phillies, and then I found myself intrigued by the Colorado Rockies. No team had ever entered the World Series with as much momentum, 21 out of 22 wins. And they hadn’t been there before. And by gosh, I knew this team a little, by pure coincidence, having caught them in Arizona a few springs, and then twice in 2006, in Seattle at the SABR game (recalled because it was over in under two hours, thanks to Josh Fogg and Jamie Moyer; the lights never came on); and at Miller Park in Milwaukee, while in that city doing research. In other words, I saw more of the Rockies the past few years, than my own Pirates.
 

            Cleveland would have been the ideal dueling partner for the Cubs, but the Indians couldn’t finish off the Red Sox, and Boston marched past them into the Series. Losing to the Sox was not bad enough, but the way they coughed up those last three games was ugly. Not very gripping baseball, not really October baseball.
 

            And that set up a win-win World Series. I didn’t realize this right away, it was only after Boston took the first two games, and I was talking with a friend about the Rockies prospects. Unless their team is in the Series, I think most fans root for seven games . I do. I found myself pulling for the Rockies when this Series began — as I said, I knew them some, and it was their first time, and, well, they’re also National League , but that doesn’t count like it used to. But Colorado apparently lost all its momentum, dropping two in Boston.
 

            With the odds now shifting fast to a Boston championship, I realized the bright side, that made this Series win-win: if the Sox won, it would really gall the Yankee fans. And that made the sweep much easier to take. The Yankee fans not only lost out in the playoffs this October, they lost their popular manager, Joe Torre. And with that loss, they face the additional loss of some key players, including Alex Rodriguez and Mariano Rivera and I think a few others. Should A-Rod end up in Boston — there was some speculation about that even before Game Four had ended — the misery for Yankee fans would be acute. Perhaps not enough to offset all the gloating about all those rings. But it’s a start.
 

            But hats off to the Red Sox, they won in style. Without much help from me. It would have been better if all of the games were as close as the finale. Or if they had all been an hour shorter. But give the Sox credit, they won this trophy handily, with that unbeatable combination of good pitching and good hitting, and toss in good hustle and defense. They played like champions. And this wasn’t the same Red Sox team that won in 2004, not at all, so give them credit for restocking and developing fresh talent, too.
 

            THE REST OF THIS ISSUEwill sweep right along, too. Up top, a report on a couple local baseball events, and I’ll end with one, too. Sandwiched in between, a story about a fellow named Ben Egan, obscure outside the shadows of Cooperstown, and probably to most fans inside as well. But not in his heyday, the first decades of last century, and certainly not in Sherrill, NY. Ben’s path crossed a few times with that of Babe Ruth — but I think he had a pretty fascinating life on his own.
 

 

“ALL REAL LIVING IS MEETING”  
 

            Appearing in Notes , the quote above might be suspected of coming from Sparky Anderson, AKA Captain Hook, who apparently enjoyed chatting with his pitchers on the mound. But no, the words are from Martin Buber, whose I And Thou was once a kind of cult classic on college campuses in the sixties. I was fond of citing it when, in my various workplaces, a co-worker would complain, Not another meeting !  Time management advisors say that meetings can be a huge time drain, if they are not properly run, and we have probably all been there.
 

            But I confess that I have almost always enjoyed meetings. Get people together, and things happen, things will be said, that would not happen or be said if the folks only communicated by memo or phone or e-mail. (Don’t get me wrong — e-mail, phone calls and memos are excellent ways to communicate and each have their place. They can prevent the need to meet, sometimes, and if there’s a lot of communication going on all the time, meetings should be shorter and more focused.)
 

            That said, the past week has been, oddly enough, a week of meetings for me. It started with a talk on my B-Sox book at the Herkimer Historical Society. It was a dark, rainy and windy evening, better suited to ghost stories, but the B-Sox can be a scary topic, too. I spoke with an audience of eight — not the smallest and not the largest, as my Historical Society talks have gone. And I really enjoyed it, because I think everyone got to ask all of their questions — something that does not happen in large groups, because some folks just won’t speak up in large groups, and because there are always more questions than their is time for answers.
 

            Eight has always seemed to me the ideal size for group discussion. I much prefer eight to the one-on-one interviewing I do, whether via e-mail, or over the phone. These interviews, often for radio talk shows (but taped in advance), can be great fun if the interviewer has done their homework, and keeps it interesting. And most do, although if the opening line is, “I have your book but haven’t had the chance to get to it yet,” I usually react Uh oh .
 

            What I enjoy about discussions is that while one person is talking, the rest are not just listening, but thinking , and one question or answer sparks fresh ones. Maybe a response that is acceptable to the person who asked the question, is not satisfying to someone else. Well what about THIS?   The nuances of the subject can be explored. I’m on record as preferring to talk with a group, versus to lecture to a group. For thirty or maybe forty years, I’ve carried around an old saying, “I never learned anything when my mouth was open.” When I talk with , I learn stuff, and even if I learn nothing new about the B-Sox, I learn how people react to what I have presented. And that’s something.
 

            The next evening, I attended a program at Mohawk Valley Community College, where Tim Wiles, the director of the research center at the Hall of Fame, warmed up an audience before Game One of the World Series, with a variety show of sorts. Many readers know, I’m sure, that Tim has picked up where DeWolf Hopper left off, performing Casey at the Bat (in full Mudville costume), and something tells me that Tim has set his sights on Hopper’s record (self-estimated at over 10,000 performances). Tim also treated us to other renditions, by Garrison Keiler and others. I knew Tim has expanded his stage world to include Take Me Out to the Ballgame , and look forward to his book on that song, out next year in time for its centennial. It was a fun evening, with the variations on the familiar themes providing much humor.
 

            Speaking of MVCC, I’m hoping that enough folks sign up for a class on Baseball History next spring, on the Rome campus, to enable me to each a non-credit, six-session class. I would delighted if the number of students was eight.
 

 

BEN AND THE BABE  
 

            When I moved to the part of upstate NY I call the shadows of Cooperstown in 1974, I discovered that I was also in the shadows of the Oneida Community, a utopian experiment in Bible communism that flourished under John Humphrey Noyes between 1848 and 1881. Better known is the corporation it evolved into, Oneida Limited, which made a few sets of silverware over the last century or so. I read at least ten books on OC, starting with A Yankee Saint , which I thought was a Gehrig biography — but it was Noyes. And I visited the Mansion House, which was once alive with over two hundred community members, who not only lived together and worked together, but played together. Yes, they played baseball, but with their rolling lawns, croquet was bigger.
 

            When I visited the Mansion House this past summer with a history teacher friend, I noticed near the Mansion House lobby an old framed photograph of two ballplayers in uniform. One was the young Bambino, Ruth recognizable anywhere. The other was identified as Ben Egan. There must be something about obscure catchers that makes them objects of my curiosity — call it Paddy Livingston syndrome. What was the story with Ben and the Babe?
 

            The Mansion House is in Sherrill, on the edge of Oneida County, and at the village web site is a list of their parks: www.sherrillny.org/parks.htm— and there, we find out that at Noyes Park, on September 1, 1910, George Herman “Babe” Ruth pitched a game for Baltimore of the Eastern League, against the Oneida Community Ltd. team. The latter was made up mostly of workers from the trap shop — before they struck gold with their line of tableware and other silver products, making traps for hunting was a thriving industry at OC.
 

            The author of the web site story guesses that Baltimore was playing OC Ltd that day because of their catcher, Ben Egan, who hailed from Sherrill. But there is a problem with that date, since Ruth didn’t sign a pro contract till 1914, and was just 15 years old in 1910. In Ben Egan’s Cooperstown file is an undated clipping which includes the photo of “Babe and Ben,” and the caption says “this picture taken after Ruth had been traded to the New York Yankees and was returning to Baltimore for an exhibition game.” The clipping notes that Egan was then 77 and retired, placing it around 1960.
 

            Egan recalled the last time his path crossed with Ruth’s — in 1947, Babe was in Syracuse to give a talk. Egan visited in Ruth’s hotel room and they gabbed for about three hours. Egan said Ruth knew he was not going to be around much longer. “It’s a shame he had to go the way he did, he loved life so much.”
 

            So who was Ben Egan?  He was in fact Arthur Augustus Egan, born in 1883 in Augusta, not far from Sherrill. Apparently he was called Ben from childhood on, perhaps because a boyhood chum was Ben Stewart. Ben completed eight years of elementary school in Sherrill, and a note in his file reads “silverware — 5 cents/hr.” When Ben retired from baseball in 1928, he would return to Oneida Limited and work there until he retired again, around 1974. He lived another ten years, in Sherrill, passing away in 1984. According to his obituaries, Ben Egan was behind the plate when Babe Ruth made his pitching debut for Baltimore.
 

            Baltimore, in those days, was operated by Jack Dunn, and was the cream of the International or Eastern League. The team had the reputation of being capable of beating most major league teams. Baltimore had a good working relationship with Connie Mack, among others, who kept Baltimore supplied with talent. Ben Egan was credited with developing a number of pitchers who went on to succeed in the majors. But not Ruth — Egan said Ruth had the right stuff from Day One. Lefty Grove, maybe.
 

            Ben’s first baseball team was his own family. He and his nine brothers (the tenth was the mascot) were “the most remarkable baseball team in America, according to a clipping in a Syracuse paper in 1904. Ben was then, as always, the catcher. His first job on a regular team was with the Muck Diggers, then with a nine in nearby Oneida, “then later caught a colored pitcher” (was Satchel barnstorming back then?), then he signed on to play for Rome, NY, for $50 a month. In 1905, Rome was in the Empire State League. When Rome folded in 1906, Ben moved on to Penn Yan where he played his first pro games, moving on to Auburn and other teams as needed. He had a brief trial in the New England league “after Haverhill” — these first years are a bit cloudy.
 

            In 1907, at age 23, Ben Egan caught on (no pun intended) with Utica, in the NY State League. His .385 average the next summer earned him a purchase by Baltimore, and a cup of coffee, two games, with Connie Mack’s A’s. But the A’s were loaded with catchers, so in 1909 Ben was back in Baltimore and Utica (97 games, .217). The Utica team in those days had the politically incorrect nickname “Pent-Ups” (AKA “Asylums”) because the area had several “state hospitals” (psychiatric centers). They were actually named “Lunatic Asylums” earlier, so maybe “Pent-Ups” was really a progressive nickname.
 

            A couple notes in Ben’s file say that he played for Baltimore in 1910 (106 games, .232), then sold to the A’s for a then-record (Eastern League) $7,000. If Ben indeed joined the A’s for the 1910 World Series against the Cubs (the A’s won, 4-1), he was a spectator.
 

            Now the property of the A’s, Ben was back in Baltimore for 1911 (135 games, .274), but in 1912, he spent the full season with Connie Mack in Philadelphia (48 games, .174). A future Hall of Fame pitcher, Stan Coveleski made his debut that summer, and in The Glory of Their Time he recalled for Larry Ritter how “Big Benny” Egan made his first start easier. He told the rookie all he had to do was throw to his catcher’s mitt, and it worked out fine.
 

            That low average landed Egan back in Baltimore for 1913, for perhaps the peak year of his career. Captain of Dunn’s team, Ben Egan caught 138 games, batted .280, and was named the league’s MVP. (Some sources have 1913 as the year Egan said he caught Ruth’s first game, but it was probably 1914.) Baltimore set a record, winning 27 straight that summer.
 

            Orioles’ owner Dunn had asked Egan what he thought of Ruth, perhaps even before signing him, and the story goes that Egan had nothing but praise for the untried kid from St Mary’s. “Dunnie, believe me,” Egan was said to have told his boss, “You won’t be able to hold him half a season. He’s simply wonderful, and you never heard me say that about another ballplayer in my life.” Ben’s prediction proved to be accurate, the teenage Ruth was just too good for the Orioles.
 

            In 1914, Egan had played 42 games (.250) with Baltimore when he was sold — along with pitchers Babe Ruth and Ernie Shore — to the Boston Red Sox. It appears that the price was $8,500, with Ruth costing $2,900. Some sources have it $25,000, perhaps imagining the BoSox just couldn’t have found such a bargain. But I think the $8,500 might be right, because a number of sources also report that Dunn gave Connie Mack first shot at the Ruth-Shore-Egan package, but Mack pleaded poverty, and couldn’t come up with Dunn’s asking price of $10,000.
 

            In any case, before he could put on even one Red Sock, Boston sent Egan to Cleveland, where he appeared in 29 games, hitting .229. There is a note that Egan at first refused to report to Cleveland, so maybe he lost some time there. Remember, in 1914 the Federal League was competing for ML talent, and players could make certain demands. Egan was back for Cleveland in 1915, but batted just .108 in 42 games. He was then released to Newark for 1916, where he batted .286 in 92 games.
 

            In 1917, Egan hit .231 in 106 games for Newark, and .261 in 53 games for Bridgeport. The next April, he was sold to Little Rock, who later sold him after a salary dispute to Baltimore, although it appears he was still the property of Cleveland. Anyway, in 1918 Egan got into 105 games with Baltimore, batting .268.
            Egan had longed to manage, and finally got the chance, when Dunn released him to move to New Jersey, where he played three seasons for AA Jersey City Skeeters (I think Woody Allen said that the mosquito is the NJ State Bird), taking over as a playing manager. It almost didn’t happen, Dunn was short on catchers, but he found a couple replacements and rewarded Ben for his years of excellent service. The Sporting News called Egan (“the Human Pepperbox”) at the time, “probably the most popular player who ever played in Baltimore,” and there was talk of a “Ben Egan Day” when Ben returned as skipper of the Skeeters. He led a team of discarded players to a first division finish, and his potential as a developer of players was finally being realized.
 

            Ben managed in New Jersey in 1922 and 1923, then did some coaching of pitchers for the Washington Senators, who wound up winning the Series that year. But Ben was released by the Senators to make room for Al Schacht, who reunited with Nick Altrock to form a “comic pair” of Clown Princes. Schacht and Altrock were legitimate coaches, but they could also entertain fans before games, between the games of a doubleheader, or during rain delays. So they were more than mascots, and more than coaches, and Ben Egan was perhaps unfairly let go because, well, he just wasn’t funny enough. Egan wound up in the shadows of Cooperstown again — Utica, NY, which was then in a Class B League, and he managed there for two seasons.
 

            In 1925 he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers as a coach, mainly for pitchers. He also did some coaching for Cornell. In 1926, he was hired by playing-manager Eddie Collins to coach for the White Sox. Egan was spending more time now on his farm in Sherrill. In 1927, he took his last baseball job, coaching with Georgetown.
 

            Ben Egan was the only one in his family to make it to the top in baseball. In the 1920s, the Egan Brothers played basketball (if all ten were still around, they could entertain a gym full of fans all by themselves). Ben eventually went to work for Oneida Limited, spending the next half century telling stories to his co-workers and neighbors about catching Babe Ruth, sitting beside Connie Mack and Eddie Collins, and about the day he convinced Baltimore to stop and play a game in Sherrill. Want to see the photograph?
 

            Look for more — but not much more — on Ben Egan and the Day the Bambino Pitched in Sherrill, in future NOTES. Or you can look up Ben Egan on http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com.
 

 

A SPECIAL THANK YOU  
 

            At the SABR Regional meeting on October 27, I gave a talk on Collyer’s Eye (see NOTES #406-411 and 416 ). Preparing it, I realized that I probably could write a short book on the EYE , having already filled over 65 pages in Notes , and having copied over 120 pages from scanning five (of the eight) reels of microfilm newly available to researchers.
 

            But the thank you here is not for the audience who patiently endured my rambling on about Bert Collyer and the Eye ‘s relentless coverage of crookedness in American sport. No, it goes to the Cooperstown Chapter’s recognition committee, for honorig me with the 2007 Cliff Kachline Award for baseball research. The chapter started presenting this award four or five years ago, with the first trophy — a personalized bat from the Cooperstown Bat Company — going to Cliff himself, a SABR founding father who until recently has lived in Cooperstown and contributed regularly to the chapter’s meetings. The next two awards went to Bill Deane and Gabriel Schechter, giving the award not just credibility but the flavor of recognition for long achievement.
 

            I was surprised and almost speechless. I had to accept with a nod to many others, who make my research possible, and easier, and fun. I have said often over the past five years or so, that I often feel like I am coordinating a research team. I’ve never been a Lone Ranger, and giving credit where it is due is important to me. So again, thank you, everyone.
 

            When I accepted the Larry Ritter Award last summer for Burying the Black Sox , I said it was an honor to be associayed with Larry Ritter, whom I had met only through SABR member, but never in person. I echo that in accepting “the Cliff” — and it has a special meaning to me because I met Cliff at my second SABR convention, in Pittsburgh, 1995. And I’ve gotten to know him some over the past twelve seasons. In fact, he is one of those teammates who has helped make my research easier, and more fun.
 

            In honor of Cliff, I’m re-running here an item from NOTES #122, February 3, 1996 :
 

AN INTERVIEW WITH A BIBLICAL AUTHOR  
 

            On January 26, when the sporting world seemed immersed in Superhyperbowlia, I took my mind off the thing by pilgrimaging south once more. But this time not to the Hall or its Library, but to keep a promise made last June at the SABR Convention, to meet with Cliff Kachline and make some Oral History.
 

            I’m a rookie at this, and SABR provided me with guidelines — not written, but a cassette of a presentation at a past convention on interviewing techniques, which was enjoyable all by itself. Preparing for my first time at the recorder, I found a brief bio of Cliff in Total Baseball — an article by Cliff on “Phantom Ballplayers” is there, too. At age 21, Cliff left a reporter’s job in a small town outside Philadelphia, to go to St Louis to work for The Sporting News — in 1943. He finally left TSN in 1967. Cliff also worked at the Hall of Fame as historian (1969-82), was one of the original 16 SABR members — a 25th anniversary is on deck for this summer — and was SABR’s first executive director (1983-85.)
 

            We taped non-stop about three hours, and I think we could have gone on longer, but we both had commitments. Cliff has a wonderful recall, and plenty to remember. I first started reading TSN , “the Bible of Baseball,” around 1958, so hearing all about how the sacred text was inspired was fascinating. J.G. Taylor Spink seems like baseball’s Citizen Kane, and why nobody has written a good book, screenplay, or something about this guy is a puzzlement. Cliff could help, and Bob Broeg’s still around.
 

            Cliff was one of a very small permanent staff who worked long St Louis days (without air-conditioning), sifting through the reports of hundreds of correspondents and dozens of papers from every major and minor league city or town, to produce the weekly TSN — which did its best to keep baseball honest, both before and after Judge Landis was enthroned as Commish — a classic case of the independent press versus the powers that be.
 

            Cliff’s first sweaty summer in St. Loo was climaxed by a chance to see World Series games, and his second time around, 1944, the Browns and Cardinals both won their leagues. But times were different, and Cliff has no recollection of even a parade, let alone a media-blitz Mardi Gras that we expect today. The war had thinned the ranks of MLB, but the Browns had not been too affected, and ’44 was their only pennant in St Louis.
 

            Cliff just barely missed the Eddie Gaedel game, but had some fine stories about it anyway. We also talked about the problem of Nap Lajoie’s 1901 hit total, and the tools of baseball research. We talked about Bill James and Lee Allen, Stan Musial and Marty Marion ( how thin was he? ), and dozens of other people and places and events. An amazing January afternoon, talkin’ baseball.
 

[I believe the tapes of my interview with Cliff are available both from SABR and from the Cooperstown library.]