Quote:
Originally Posted by Pelican
My guess is that the early PCL had players who were not ready or able in 1915 to journey across the country, on the hope of playing in MLB.
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Apologies for jumping on a single quote that is secondary to the point of the thread — but this stood out to me.
Based on my research, it's not only PCL players who decided that it wasn't worth it to journey across the country to try to play in either the American or National Leagues. You see the same thing in the pre-WWI era among minor leaguers who were already playing in the east.
My favorite example is Harry Pattee, a player who is probably as obscure as they come. Pattee played half a season for Brooklyn in 1908. As I was doing research for
this article, I learned that Brooklyn had actually signed Pattee as early as 1906, but had difficulty convincing him to leave the New England minor league circuit to play in the big city.
It turns out that Pattee had good reason to stay away from Washington Park. Washington Park was located across the street from a number of factories, and was constantly covered in smog and dust.
Pattee suffered an injury in 1908 when a piece of ash from one of those factories blew into his eye. He then injured his knee when he tried to come back from that eye injury, and wound up going back to the cleaner air of the minor leagues, never to return to the majors.
Now, the really crazy thing about this is that Pattee wasn't the only minor league player that Ebbets signed but couldn't convince to actually move up to the big club. The Superbas had a lot of difficulty convincing players to play in Washington Park — and had a real rough time convincing fans to watch games there. This particularly evident if you start researching the National League championship teams of 1899 and 1900 — the attendance was pitiful both years, and the old newspapers were filled with rumors that the Superbas were going to move to Washington DC midway through 1900.
Sometimes it wasn't the player's choice. You get guys like
Hunky Shaw, who was a star in Tacoma in 1906 and 1907 and wound up being picked up by the Pirates in early 1908. The Pirates were in desperate need of a third baseman, and Shaw was a good fielder and known for his hitting skill. However, Honus Wagner's return from his holdout (which was reported as a "retirement" at the time) shook things up considerably in the lineup. Outfielder Tommy Leach wound up moving over to third base, and Shaw ended up with a single plate appearance in his major league career before moving back to the minors.
Shaw is the sort of player designed for OOTP — and frustrates me to no end as a result. I wish the minor league database before 1915 or whenever it starts in earnest were more complete. Anybody playing a 1908 replay is going to wonder why the Pirates had a "pinch hitter" who only strikes out — and anybody managing that team is going to be in trouble if Leach is injured.
The real interesting part is that
Alan Storke had been Pittsburgh's third baseman in 1907. He decided to go back to Harvard in early 1908, which is the reason why the Pirates picked up Shaw in the first place. That's another odd transaction that you don't see much anymore.
The point, though, is that it was pretty common in those days for other things to keep otherwise good players from having major league careers. Sometimes their progress was blocked, and internal clubhouse politics ensured that they'd have no chance. Sometimes they didn't want to play there themselves.
The more I look into the old history, the more I realize that player movement was more common in the railroad days than I first thought. Of course, there are also some funny stories in books like
The Glory Of Their Times about newly arrived young players getting lost on the way to the ballpark.