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)
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