[tm1681]

JACOB MILBURN MOVES TO SEMI-PRO BALL, GOES HOME TO ILLINOIS

During the 1898 season, Jacob Milburn became the second professional member of the 3,000-Hit Club, but the larger aims of his team weren’t realized as the Pennsylvania Quakers finished second in the Metropolitan Conference and didn’t get the chance to compete for the President’s Cup.

Because of the Quakers’ failure to reach the APBL’s final stage, after four years in Philadelphia Milburn was allowed to leave as a Free Agent for the crime of “only” hitting .343. Was that a career low by nearly thirty points? Yes it was, but he was still fourth in the APBL in hits (185), sixth in RBI (84), and had an OPS of .864 (136 OPS+) – all excellent marks for a 38-year-old.

Milburn had a deal in hand to stay in the APBL and play right field for the New York Athletics, but changed his mind. Instead, he opted to sign for the Peoria Cardinals in the Great Lakes Baseball Conference – the team located about a 90-minute train ride from his hometown of Rushville, Illinois. Why the change of mind? The game’s greatest-ever hitter stated to puzzled reporters that - after a record 3,151 hits, a .402 batting average, and thirteen Batsman of the Year awards over seventeen professional seasons - he felt didn’t have anything left to prove to the baseball executives who thought he was over the proverbial hill because he was “only” hitting in the mid-.300s.

His deal was huge by GLBC standards: three years at $2,480 per year, pay similar to that of a 3.5-star player in the APBL & MWBA, and pay that made him the highest paid player in the league by about $700 per year (39%) over Saginaw’s Ajdir Kambuji. This was also over $1,000 per year higher than the third-richest GLBC player (Grover Stump of Grand Rapids). However, the Cardinals had enough money in the coffers to add his salary and still sign one more semi-pro free agent. Milburn didn’t mind the pay cut – he made $5,300 for the Quakers in 1898 – because he’d earned more than sixty thousand dollars over the course of his career, more than anyone else all-time except Hans Ehle.





With Jacob Milburn making such a surprising change, it was going to be quite interesting to see what a career .402 hitter in the two best leagues in existence would do in a semi-professional league to end his career.

(NOTE: This is one of maybe two times I've put my thumb on the scale so far in the in-game universe. As I've noted before he was a serious outlier created by the OOTP23 player creation engine. His raw attributes when I made the Midwestern Baseball Association in 1882 in-game had him hitting .395 in a modern-day environment. So, I wanted him to end his career with a .400 average at MLB level because...why not?)