This Day in Baseball History (Speaker Starts Record Hitting Streak)

July 24, 1912—Tris Speaker, the 24-year-old centerfielder of the Boston Red Sox, began his third streak of 20-plus games with consecutive hits in a single season, an unusual record that no hitter has since matched—not even Joe DiMaggio.

The Yankee Clipper, with a (single) 56-game hitting streak, has, along with Willie Mays, long since displaced Speaker in the popular imagination as the greatest centerfielder in baseball history. But the Gray Eagle deserves to be better known—and particularly for his performance in this season 100 years ago, when he not only led the Bosox to a World Series triumph but won the Chalmers Award—predecessor of today’s Most Valuable Player Award—in the bargain.

The future Hall of Famer’s offensive prowess (part of a season in which he batted .383, garnered 222 hits and stole 52 bases), demonstrated so strongly in this unusual set of streaks, was overshadowed by another great hitter of this era: Ty Cobb. The Georgia Peach batted .410 that year—and, as I noted in a prior post, stole most of the media attention that summer because of a notorious incident in which he ran into the stands to beat up a disabled heckler.

Speaker’s brilliance at the plate might also have been taken for granted because of his superlative defensive skills. So fast that he could catch up to long line drives, he repeatedly played close to the infield, even throwing out batters before they could even reach first base. In effect, his daring positioning allowed him to function as a fifth infielder and plug up any holes on the diamond.

The outfielder, however, remains among an elite group of players whose superior glove is matched by a devastating bat. His .344 lifetime batting average exceeds Babe Ruth’s. His 3,515 hits—still fifth best on the all-time list—were accumulated in the deadball era, when, as the “Green Monster” blogger notes, “the league-wide batting average was .243, entire teams only hit less than 10 home runs in a season, and pitchers were allowed to scuff, spit on and manipulate the ball in ways that are illegal in today's game.” He remains the career leader in doubles, and his 436 stolen bases are simply another manifestation of the speed that made him such a daring and unique outfielder.

When it comes to all-around brilliance on the diamond (and even in the clubhouse—as player-manager, he would direct his next team, the Cleveland Indians, to a World Series triumph in 1920), Speaker’s election to Cooperstown in 1937 was as close to a slam-dunk as possible. But “character”—the criterion that has prevented gambler Pete Rose and steroid user Mark McGwire from entering the Hall of Fame—proves a more difficult problem for this hero of early baseball.

The fact was that the player who set these records—and could change the outcome of the game with his bat as well as his glove—often felt out of place in the Red Sox clubhouse and his adopted city, a fact outlined with considerable skill in Tris Speaker: The Rough-And-Tumble Life of a Baseball Legend, by Timothy M. Gay (2006). 

The Hubbard, Texas, native reflected the rural Protestant sensibilities of his region. He not only thought that the Civil War was “the war of Northern aggression,” but admitted to a sportswriter early in his career that he was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. 

Moreover, on a Red Sox squad with growing appeal to Boston Irish Catholics then coming into their own as a political force, Speaker was, together with great friend “Smokey Joe” Wood, one of the “Masons” clique in opposition to its “Knights of Columbus” contingent.Tensions between the two groups became so bad that at one point, Speaker’s practical joke on fellow outfielder Duffy Lewis—knocking his cap off out on the field so that the Lewis’s receding hairline was exposed for all the world to see—led to fisticuffs. Catcher Bill Carrigan, another member of the "Knights" who had clashed with Speaker, didn't mourn his loss after the centerfielder departed the Red Sox just before the 1916 season in a contract dispute.

In Speaker’s defense, one could argue that he grew over time—or, at least, that his rough edges were smoothed out. He eventually married an Irish Catholic immigrant, and 20 years after his retirement he mentored Larry Doby, as the player who broke the color line in the American League adjusted to the outfield.

But Speaker may have been guilty of the one offense that, above all else, still represents the third rail in baseball clubhouses: gambling. Late in their playing careers, Speaker and Cobb faced an accusation from pitcher Dutch Leonard that they had bet on and “fixed” a game. The two men, in fact, resigned after American League President Ban Johnson followed up on Leonard’s charge by speaking to the two players.

Then, when the news aired publicly, Speaker and Cobb, deciding they had nothing left to lose, turned around and fought the charges, with the help of their attorneys. Baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, finding Leonard’s credibility problematic, absolved Speaker and Cobb, and the two finished up their careers with the Philadelphia Athletics. But, to some extent, the taint of scandal clung to their names in baseball front offices. 

When Cleveland Indians owner Bill Veeck asked Speaker to work with Doby, this was the first major league job that “Spoke” had had in years. Ironically, the name of “The Gray Eagle” ended up sanitized through his assistance to a man he would never have wanedt to play with or against early in his career because of the color of his skin.

My longtime friend, autograph authentication expert Jim Spence, offers a fine analysis of the career—and distinctive scrawl—of Speaker here.

(Photograph of Tris Speaker from the Prints and Photographs division of the Library of Congress)