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FORGOTTEN HISTORY: ANTHONY MASCHERINO

One of the best players of both pre-professional baseball and the early years of the American Professional Baseball league is someone who still manages to be underappreciated: shortstop Anthony Mascherino.



Mascherino manages to fall into both categories because he achieved a longevity that made people take him for granted and played extraordinary defense at a time when a player’s glove was what amounted to wraps on their off-hand, and thus errors occurred at an astronomical amount compared to the early 1900s and especially to today’s game.

That said, here’s what Mascherino was: he was quite possibly the second-best player – behind only Konrad Jensen – over the fourteen seasons of the NBBO before the creation of professional baseball, and he was great for long enough that he was still an elite player plying his trade for the Knickerbockers near the end of the APBL’s first decade.

The Concord, NH native entered the NBBO at its foundation fresh out of high school with the Green Mountain Club of Vermont in 1857. He stayed there for a dozen years before moving to Upstate New York to play with the Minuteman Club in Albany for the last two seasons before the start of the APBL. He won just one Batsman of the Year Award and one Most Valuable Player award in the Northeastern League, but he was an eleven-time All-Star and won eight Golden Gloves before his move to the professional game:





Again, all stat highlighting before 1881 in my game was nuked due to an issue…

Mascherino was never a Batting Champion (2nd once) or an RBI king (best was 6th), but his hitting as a shortstop, combined with his fielding being so far better than his peers, led to him having a stretch where he led the Northeastern League in position player WAR for no less than nine straight seasons: 1859-67. What makes that run truly amazing is that his first season leading the NEL in WAR came when he was just 20 years old. That dominant stretch meant he left the NBBO having earned more WAR than any other position player at 51.6 (2nd: Edward Huntley at 49.7) and he was STILL the all-time NBBO position player WAR leader when its single competition format ended in 1889.

During Mascherino’s time in the NBBO he made it to the Tucker-Wheaton Cup playoffs seven times – six with Green Mountain and one with Minuteman – and won two cups, both with Green Mountain. During the postseason he was even a better player than he was during the NBBO’s May-July regular season:





A playoff OPS+ of 175 for Mascherino was just two points off that of the NBBO’s best hitter: Konrad Jensen (177). His playoff batting earned him three MVP awards: the 1861 Northeastern League semifinals MVP, the 1863 NEL semifinals MVP, and the 1865 NEL semifinals MVP.

Because Mascherino became a regular for Green Mountain while he was a teenager, he was still only 32 when he moved to the Pennsylvania Quakers for the debut season of the American Professional Baseball league. He should have only had a few decent to good seasons left in him, but Mascherino kept up his performance long enough to effectively have another full career in the APBL:





Mascherino would go on to be part of the first APBL championship winners, and he would win three more APBL titles: 1876 (Brooklyn), ’77 (Knickerbockers), and ’78 (Knickerbockers). More importantly, Mascherino won six of the first eight APBL Golden Gloves at shortstop, the last of them coming when he was 39 years old. Those six, combined with his Golden Glove haul from the NBBO, brought his career total to fourteen, a number unmatched by any infielder in the 19th Century and equaled only by Boston Shamrocks outfielder Isaiah Duffy.

Mascherino was not a highly decorated hitter but he was a very good one, and his defense was so far ahead of its time that with the help of advanced metrics he is now seen as one of the very best players of the early days of baseball. Mascherino’s accomplishments over his 25-year career (14 in the NBBO, 11 in the APBL):

• 6x Championship Winner (4x APBL, 2x NBBO)
• 1x Northeastern League (NBBO) Batsman of the Year (1865)
• 1x Northeastern League (NBBO) Most Valuable Player (1861)
• 14x Golden Glove at SS (8x NBBO, 6x APBL) – career record holder as of 1895
• 8x Team of the Year at SS (5x NBBO, 3x APBL)
• 11x National Base Ball Organization All-Star (1859-67, 69-70)
• 12x League Leader in Position Player WAR (9x NBBO, 3x APBL) – career record holder as of 1895

• 85.7 WAR over 1,734 G (8.0/162 G) – career record holder for position players (all levels) as of 1895
• +525.1 Zone Rating at SS over 1,688 G – career record holder for position players (all levels) as of 1895
• 1.193 Defensive Efficiency at SS over 1,688 G – career record holder for shortstops (all levels) as of 1895

During his career in the NBBO, Mascherino was overshadowed by the hitting of star 3B/SS Edward Huntley, and during his time in the APBL he would continue to be looked over, first due to the star power of Huntley and then at the tail end of his career the fantastic ability of then-young star Edward Fitzsimmons. However, a look back shows him to be baseball’s first defensive wizard and possibly the best middle infielder of the first fifty years of the sport.

Some would argue that players like Charley Rankin surpassed him, but shortness of seasons play a factor. Back when the NBBO was the highest level of baseball Mascherino averaged 9.9 WAR per 162 games before he hit the age Rankin was at the end of 1895 (26), and Rankin averaged 9.0 WAR per 162 games over the same span.