|
The "Uncorked 11:" Yankees Bungle their
Past; Snub, Among Others, Hall of Famers Clark Griffith and Frank
Chance in Detailing Just 11 Captains Including Derek Jeter; Lou
Gehrig Takes a Hit Too
Don Mattingly was definitely not the tenth captain
of the New York Yankees, a decade of media reporting on Yankee
baseball notwithstanding, and the newly named Derek Jeter is therefore
not the 11th. The grand total of Yankee captains to date seems
like 15, says Howard W. Rosenberg, biographer of Cap Anson, the
19th-century Hall of Famer and longtime captain-manager whose
nickname derived from the word "captain."
When Jeter was named captain on June 3, the Yankees
issued a news release that could be read on the Yankees' Web site
on mlb.com (and was still there as of June 9). The precise ring
exuded by the release may help explain why media outlets did not
bother attributing the data to the Yankees. The Yankees supplied
full start and end dates (month, day and year) for many of the
captaincies, starting with Babe Ruth's in 1922.
Yet the Yankees bungled Lou Gehrig's start date
as April 21, 1935, and apparently have been doing so since at
least 1991 (when the error appeared that way in the New York Times).
That date should be April 12, 1935, as validated by the Times
of April 13, 1935. Rosenberg surmises that today, while hardly
anyone is sentimental that the Yankees overlooked perhaps four
of their captains (whose names are not of the likes of DiMaggio
or Mantle), an error on Gehrig's milestone will be deemed a sacrilege.
A back-to-back view of the Yankees' "uncorked
11" and Rosenberg's "gang of 15" captains chronologies
appears at the bottom of this analysis.
Rosenberg does appreciate that the Yankees addressed
an historical subject that hardly any baseball media (let alone
fans) know anything about. He would welcome the opportunity to
tell Yankee officials and players all about captains, captain-managers
and bench managers in the old days (or if they want, they can
read his July 2003 release: Cap Anson 1: When Captaining a Team
Meant Something: Leadership in Baseball's Early Years). Rosenberg
adds, "As penance, I invite those hoodwinked New York and
national media not overly tied to ratings points or perceived
focus-group sensibilities to serve up a few features that relate
the first decades of U.S. team sport to today. As captain-manager
of Chicago for 19 years, 3,000-hitsman Anson won several pennants,
and his relations with famous Hall of Fame club presidents William
Hulbert and Albert Spalding would make for an insightful comparison
to George Steinbrenner-Joe Torre-Derek Jeter relations on the
Yankees today."
Rosenberg continues: "Anson was great friends
with the Yankees' first captain, Clark Griffith, who had been
his star pitcher in Chicago in the 1890s. Also relevant
to New York, Anson had the stomach to withstand criticism (especially
about his advanced age; he was playing at age 45). He was
the first professional ball player to have star billing in a vaudeville
play (playwright Charles Hoyt's 1895 `A Runaway Colt'), and it
had a run in New York City. By the way, it was out of the storied
Chicago tradition of funny coverage (with Anson a major target)
that baseball humorist Ring Lardner blossomed in the early 20th
century. In the mid-1910s, Lardner wrote vaudeville
material for Anson."
Jeter's elevation as captain will appear
in the Anson 1 foreword, which is written by Clark C. Griffith,
great-nephew of the Yankees' first captain and Hall of Famer Clark
Griffith. The foreword writer is a former chairman of Major
League Properties, former part-owner of the Minnesota Twins and
current chairman of the sports law forum of the American Bar Association
Section on Entertainment and Sports Law.
With the help of online databases, plus hands-on
knowledge of the captain's historic role in baseball, Rosenberg
has dissected the Yankees' June 3 press release. He estimates
at 14 the number of Yankees captains prior to Jeter who served
at least a month (a captain being a player on the active roster,
and he did not necessarily have to play much). Rosenberg's "gang
of 15" list, which assumes that Jeter will last at least
a month, additionally contains Hall of Famer Griffith (1903 to
1905), Kid Elberfeld (1906 to 1909), Hall of Famer Frank Chance
(1913) and a mystery sleeper: Roy Hartzell, on the team from 1911
to 1916. On Dec. 27, 1916, the New York Times stated that the
following person had signed a minor league contract: "Roy
Hartzell, former Captain of the New York Americans." Rosenberg
could not tell, from a basic search, when Hartzell may have been
captain. Perhaps to reward readers who find missing captains,
the New York Daily News, which printed splendid pictures of the
"uncorked 11," can offer a meal or rap session with
noted columnist Mike Lupica.
The Daily News was the only major newspaper printing
the names of the "uncorked 11" that Rosenberg has seen;
the others are Newsday, the New York Post, the Bergen County [N.J.]
Record, the Hartford Courant, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and
several papers associated with the Scripps Howard News Service.
Not readily apparent is whether any of the above noted the Yankees
as the source of the information; the Daily News spread (pretty
enough to post on a wall) apparently did not attribute the data.
ESPN, before one of Jeter's three strikeouts during
last night's Yankees-Cubs game, posted the "uncorked
11" on the screen.
In handling the "uncorked 11," the New
York Times, under fire in recent weeks, deserves just a mild censure:
it was one of the few New York-area papers with big sports sections
not to print it, limiting its error to calling Jeter the 11th
captain.
Rosenberg has seen mentions of Jeter as the 11th
captain in dozens of newspapers online and several major wire
services extending as far as abroad to the Voice of America. In
no case has he seen an attribution to the Yankees as the source
for Jeter as the 11th captain.
Unlike most subjects that gain wide airing in
today's sports media, captains may seem obscure and lend themselves
to large historical blunders. While the Yankees' list seems to
reflect a reasonable mastery of the subject since the 1920s (having a
captain evolved into a matter of taste), it snubs early decades
of that century when having a captain was a necessity (as the
rule books singled out a captain who was an active player, and
not the manager, as the one with the right to argue with the umpire).
That changed around 1930 (when the rules for some
time singled out the captain or the manager as being able to argue).
The decline in the captain's importance can be seen after 1925
in the "uncorked 11" and "gang of 15" dueling
chronologies at the bottom of this note, when there is a gap between
Yankee captains until Lou Gehrig in 1935.
Today, the rules let the manager hand off to a
coach or player the role of top arguer in each game; a hypothetical
question, incidentally, is what would happen if a manager who
was not in uniform tried to come on the field and act as designated
arguer. The rules today state that to be on the field, coaches
must be in uniform. They do not address whether a bench manager
must be as well to come on the field and argue with the umpire.
In researching Anson 1, Rosenberg posed that question
to Tom Lepperd, director of umpire administration of Major League
Baseball (and the following is taken from Anson 1). When given
the hypothetical of a manager not in uniform coming out on the
field and arguing, Lepperd replied that such a practice "is
archaic in that all modern-day professional leagues implicitly
require the manager to be in uniform."
Starting with 1903, the first season of the New York AL club,
here is a chronological look at years of Yankee captains Rosenberg
found to expand the "uncorked 11" to a "gang of
15:"
A. Clark Griffith (1903 to 1905)
According to New York Times contemporaneous reporting
(which the Times in effect has undercut over two decades by accepting
modern-day chronologies presumably always supplied by the Yankees),
Griffith was the first captain (when the club had prior nicknames,
especially the Highlanders):
1. The New York Times of Dec. 10, 1902, states,
"Clark Griffith will be the Manager-Captain of the New York
American League team. . ."
2. On the eve of opening day of the club's first
season, on April 20, 1903, when New York was in Washington, the
Washington Evening Star stated, "The New York aggregation
is made up of several stars, among whom are Keeler, Fultz and
Pitchers Tannehill, Chesbro and Griffith, the latter acting as
captain-manager."
Griffith's reign as captain continued into 1904,
and probably into 1905. The New York Times of Oct. 16, 1904, reviewed
the season of the New York NL and AL clubs and ran individual
pictures of everyone, including larger elegant ones of John McGraw
of the Giants and Griffith of the AL club, with the caption "Manager
and Captain" under each.
B. Kid Elberfeld (1906 to 1909)
Proof that Elberfeld was a Yankees captain can
be found in the Times of May 15, 1906, which called him manager
"Griffith's first assistant in directing the team on the
field." If that sounds like a reference to Elberfeld as captain,
it probably is, as on August 19, 1906, the Times referred to him
as "Elberfeld, Captain of the Greater New Yorks."
On Oct. 10, 1907, the Washington Post said that
if Washington acquired Elberfeld from New York, he would undoubtedly
be named captain. Elberfeld played with the Yankees through 1909,
and he likely remained captain throughout.
C. Hal Chase (1910 to 1911, in addition to 1912)
On April 3, 1910, the Times said, "With Hal
Chase as Captain, and with more confidence than has been exhibited
in several seasons, the New York Americans show more promise than
last season." Times coverage in 1911 also points to Chase
as captain (on Feb. 18 and April 29).
D. Frank Chance (1913)
After casting Chase as captain in 1912 only, the
"uncorked 11" list jumps to Roger Peckinpaugh, for 1914-21.
For 1913, Rosenberg opines that Chance was circumstantially the
Yankee captain (news reports show Chance in uniform on the coaching
lines into late in the season, playing in a few games. They also
show him arguing with the umpire over captain-like issues including
the legality of the pitcher's motion).
The "uncorked 11" contains a large gap
from 1926 to 1935 and in case you are now understandably suspicious,
the Times and the Associated Press, contemporaneously, validated
at least some of the gap. In their 1935 coverage, both news outlets
pointed wrongly to Babe Ruth as the last captain before 1935 (Ruth
was captain briefly in 1922, while Everett Scott was captain from
1922 to 1925). However, Scott does appear among the "uncorked
11," so the Yankees can be praised for helping reporters
improve on coverage from 68 years ago. The Times of April 13,
1935, does allude to Scott's tenure in stating, "Not for
ten years has the Yankee club had a captain;" however, it
then gives an explanation that makes it sound like Ruth was captain
until 1925. In reality, any suppressing of the title by the Yankees
was done not after Ruth's tenure (which was in 1922) but after
Scott's (which according to the Yankees ended with 1925).
It is unfair to single out the Times for erroneous
claims because it is one of the few newspapers available for full-text
searching on a computer. With that in mind, the oldest report
Rosenberg found in the Times of a long, bogus chain of Yankee
captains was on Jan. 31, 1982. A Times column stated, "In
their history, the Yankees have had only six captains (dash symbol
appears here) Roger Peckinpaugh, Babe Ruth (for six days in 1922
before he was defrocked by American League President Ban Johnson
and suspended after a fight with a fan) [sic, meaning that's what's
in the 1982 report], Everett Scott, Lou Gehrig, Thurman Munson
and now Graig Nettles."
That 1982 list is interesting (as far as figuring
out the chain of custody of erroneous lineage) because Peckinpaugh
was a captain only in seasons when Yankees was the official nickname.
It became the nickname in 1913, and Peckinpaugh was captain from
1914 to 1921. Perhaps the original list was compiled with an eye
toward years in which Yankees was the official nickname; however,
even by that score, the Yankees had to have had a captain in 1913
(even if the title was not bandied about explicitly), and he is
most likely the strong-willed Frank Chance (of Tinkers-to-Evers-to-Chance
poetic fame) known in 1913 as "P. L." or the Peerless
Leader; Hal Chase, the 1910-12 captain, was traded in June 1913.
In 1986, a Times article noting the then-naming of co-captains
Ron Guidry and Willie Randolph similarly named Peckinpaugh as
the first Yankee captain.
It may seem amazing that for two decades, uncorrected
lists have been published about the names of Yankee captains,
given the club's treasured history (and seemingly plentiful male
fans of an advanced age in the highly intelligent New York area).
Maybe it was earlier manifestations of the Jayson Blair phenomenon,
where members of the public often did not complain because they
had no expectation that corrections would be made.
For reference, here is the Yankees' "uncorked
11":
Hal Chase 1912
Roger Peckinpaugh 1914-1921
Babe Ruth 5/20/22-5/25/22
Everett Scott 1922-1925
Lou Gehrig 4/21/35-6/2/41
Thurman Munson 4/17/76-8/2/79
Graig Nettles 1/29/82-3/30/84
Ron Guidry 3/4/86-7/12/89
Willie Randolph 3/4/86-7/12/89
Don Mattingly 2/28/91-1995
Derek Jeter 6/3/03-
Here is the "gang of 15" based on additional research
by Cap Anson biographer Howard W. Rosenberg:
Clark Griffith 1903-05 (first addition)
Kid Elberfeld 1906-09 (second addition)
Hal Chase 1910-12 (two years added)
(Roy Hartzell, somewhere within 1911-16) (third addition)
Frank Chance 1913 (fourth addition)
Roger Peckinpaugh 1914-1921
Babe Ruth 5/20/22-5/25/22
Everett Scott 5/30/22 or later-1925 (the 5/30 date being taken
from a Times article that day noting that manager Miller Huggins
was expected to name Scott in the future)
Lou Gehrig 4/12/35-6/2/41 (note the correction to Gehrig's date
of naming)
Thurman Munson 4/17/76-8/2/79
Graig Nettles 1/29/82-3/30/84
Ron Guidry 3/4/86-7/12/89
Willie Randolph 3/4/86-7/12/89
Don Mattingly 2/28/91-1995
Derek Jeter 6/3/03-
Author's contact information:
Howard W. Rosenberg
1111 Arlington Boulevard
Number 235 West
Arlington, Virginia 22209
(703) 841-9523 (telephone)
howieanson@yahoo.com (e-mail)
|
