Maximillian George Carnarius was born January 11, 1890 in Terre Haute, Indiana. He first adopted the name Max Carey when he played his first professional baseball game in order to retain his amateur status at Concordia College; the name would stick with him for his entire career.
Carey enjoyed six seasons in which he hit over .300, but he built a more lasting reputation
as a superb defensive center fielder and a successful basestealer. The Pirates great still holds several National League records for fielding prowess and led the league in steals 10 times.
Welcome to the Baseball History Podcast: Featuring This Week in Baseball History, baseball dictionary and a tour of baseball cities. I’m your game announcer Bob Wright.
This is game 26 of the 2009 baseball season
In the first inning let’s take a look at This Week in Baseball History for the 4 week of June.
June 22
1925 Max Carey gets two hits in one inning twice (1st & 8th) as the Pirates beat the Cardinals, 24-6.
Maximillian George Carnarius was born January 11, 1890 in Terre Haute, Indiana. He first adopted the name Max Carey when he played his first professional baseball game in order to retain his amateur status at Concordia College; the name would stick with him for his entire career.
Carey enjoyed six seasons in which he hit over .300, but he built a more lasting reputation
as a superb defensive center fielder and a successful basestealer. The Pirates great still holds several National League records for fielding prowess and led the league in steals 10 times.
Max Carey was a hard working, fundamentally sound outfielder with great speed, sure hands, and good contact with a touch of power. These traits, commonly found in the early days of baseball, seemed less important in the Ruthian era in which Carey starred. His career thus represents a bridge from the bunting and speed game to the home run era.
At age 13, Carey was enrolled in a pre-ministerial program at Concordia College in Fort Wayne. After graduating in 1909, he was sent to Concordia Seminary in St. Louis to fulfill his parents’ dream and become a Lutheran minister.
Baseball would soon get in the way. Although it was not his best sport, Max had played the infield for Concordia College’s team and was noted for his speed and agility. In the summer of 1909, he attended a Central League game in Terre Haute. The opposing team from South Bend had recently sold their shortstop to a higher league, and after the game, Max tracked down their manager at their hotel and asked if he could be the team’s new shortstop. Needing to fill the hole in his lineup, the manager told him to report the next day, and he stayed in the lineup for the rest of the season.
Although he did not distinguish himself at either the plate or in the field, he did earn a new name out of the experience. Although other accounts would erroneously report that his manager and the umpire could not pronounce his real name, the real story was even simpler. Max did not want to use his real name and lose his amateur standing, so he asked his manager to give him a new name. The manager told the umpire when lineups were announced that his new shortstop was named “Carney or Carey or something like that”. The umpire recorded his name as “Max Carey,” and it would stick for the rest of his life. On the field, Carey hit only .158 with 24 errors in 48 games, and he returned to the seminary in the fall of 1909.
After spending another year at school in St. Louis, he went back to the South Bend team in the spring of 1910, hoping for another chance. The team’s new manager told him that he already had a shortstop, but there was a need in left field if Carey thought he could do the job. Leaving the seminary for good, Carey took over in the outfield and this time had an excellent season. In 96 games, he hit .298 with an electrifying total of 86 stolen bases, and threw out 25 base runners from the outfield. His great play earned him the recommendation of the league president to the Pittsburgh Pirates, who bought him in the last days of the 1910 season.
Reporting to the Pirates, Carey took the field at shortstop in hopes of returning to his favorite position. Greeting him on the diamond was the legendary Hall of Famer Honus Wagner. According to a story he loved to retell in later years, Carey naively told him that he was here to be the new shortstop. Controlling his temper, Wagner asked Carey to “wait a minute” while he went to speak to the team’s player/manager, Fred Clarke.
According to the story, Wagner told Clarke that while he was going to be at shortstop to stay, if he thought Carey had a chance to make the club then he should retire from playing and let the rookie play his left field position. Ironically, Wagner and Carey developed a strong friendship over the years, but a clash with Clarke would lead to the end of his Pirate career.
Whatever the truth of the matter was, Carey did replace Clarke in the lineup for the final two games of the 1910, and remained a fixture in the Pittsburgh outfield for the next sixteen seasons.
His Pirate career was marked by steadily consistent offensive and defensive production, mingled with moments of spectacular greatness. At the plate, he enjoyed five full seasons of averages over .300, and was on the way to a sixth when stopped by an injury in 1919; that campaign would be the only one between 1911 and 1928 in which he played fewer than 108 games.
Although not a power hitter, he used his speed in roomy Forbes Field to lead the league in triples twice and reach double figures in this category in nine seasons. A patient hitter who walked more than twice as much as he struck out, Carey frequently found ways to get on base, including one memorable 1922 afternoon in which he reached base nine times in an extra-inning marathon, and had nine five-hit games in his career.
On the base paths, Carey became a deadly threat, stealing 738 bases in his career and leading the National League ten times. In an era when the average base stealer was thrown out roughly half of the time, Carey stole 31 bases in a row in 1922, on his way to an incredible total of 51 steals in 53 attempts.
Carey covered both left and center field for the Pirates and excelled in both positions. He retired holding a major league record of six seasons with over 400 putouts, including a remarkable 450 in 1923. His 339 outfield assists remain as the highest total of any National League outfielder since 1900. He also led the league in outfield errors four times, running into errors trying to catch drives other players would not have attempted.
The once nervous .158 batting divinity student made himself into a superb all-around ballplayer by continuously adapting and developing his one natural gift of speed. He listened intently to Wagner’s tips on conditioning his legs and watching the pitcher’s move to first base.
Concerned over the possibility of her son sustaining a sliding injury, Carey’s mother sewed him a sliding pad that he soon patented. After watching Ty Cobb hit in a 1924 spring training game, Carey remodeled his batting stance and went on to have the most productive offensive season of his career in 1925, batting .343 as the Pirates won the National League pennant.
Max Carey would display all of his talents in the World Series of that year, as the Pirates faced off against the defending champion Washington Senators. Despite Carey’s best efforts, the team fell into a 3-1 hole but rallied back to win the next two games. Facing the Pirates in the decisive Game 7 was legendary Hall of Famer Walter Johnson, who had already won two games in the Series. However, the shrewd Carey had done his homework. Acting on a tip given to him prior to the Series by Detroit outfielder Bobby Veach, he discovered a flaw in Johnson’s game. Whenever Johnson shortened his delivery, he tipped off his much less effective curveball.
Carey sat on Johnson’s curves in Game 7 and rapped out four hits and stole a base as the Pirates rallied to a 9-7 victory. In the Series, Carey batted .458 with 11 hits and 3 stolen bases. Following the Series, he received a new contract for $16,000, making him the highest paid player on the team.
However, the 1925 Series was Max Carey’s swan song as an active player for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Former manager Fred Clarke, who had given his spot in the outfield to Carey back in 1910, was now only a stockholder in the club. However, Clarke enjoyed sitting on the bench as an “assistant” to manager Bill Mc Kechnie and frequently second-guessed his decisions.
Clarke’s meddling led to dissension within the clubhouse, which boiled over after an embarrassing doubleheader loss in Boston on August 7, 1926. Along with a couple of other veterans Carey called a team meeting and attempted to pass a resolution banning Clarke from the bench.
As the team’s captain, Carey felt that he should represent the players in their dispute, and his stand resulted in his becoming the fall guy for the whole ugly affair. In what would be known as the “great Pirate mutiny,” Pirate owner Barney Dreyfuss foiled Carey’s uprising by first suspending and then waiving his star outfielder and team captain. Carey was quickly claimed by the Brooklyn Robins and finished out his career there in the next two seasons.
Carey retired after the 1929 season, with career totals of 2665 hits, 738 stolen bases, and a .285 lifetime batting average.
In 1930, old wounds were healed when the Pirates welcomed Carey back as a coach. Following the 1931 season. Brooklyn’s long-time manager Wilbert Robinson was relieved of his post, and Max Carey was announced as his successor.
Promising that the Dodgers would take a more scientific approach to the game, Carey attempted to introduce his “inside baseball” style of play, with a heavier emphasis on bunting and speed. In that spirit, Carey traded away popular slugger Babe Herman and put most of the other players on the trading block.
In 1932, his system resulted in a surprising 3rd place season, and Carey drew special praise for his ability to coax a strong season out of unpredictable outfielder Hack Wilson. In 1933, the bubble burst as age and questionable personnel moves saw the team fall to sixth place. Carey went to spring training in Miami in 1934 speaking confidently of a strong season, optimistic talk which the Brooklyn press called the “newest wonder of the world.”
However, before the season started Casey Stengel replaced him as manager. Carey later remarked that “he was the first manager fired by the newspapers” and remained resentful of the team’s front office.
Carey consistently sought and found work in baseball for the rest of his life.
In 1944 he began the most unusual part of his baseball career when he was hired to manage the Milwaukee club in the All- American Girls Professional Baseball League. After winning the pennant that season, he served as the league’s president through 1950. Carey worked both to improve the level of play and public interest in the league. He took a friendly but firm approach to his players, stressing the fundamentals of his stealing and bunting techniques. He also helped the league through his tireless and unceasing promotion.
Carey often invited former teammates and opponents to see his female teams play, with the point of surprising them with their high level of ability. He told anyone who would listen that the quality of play in the AAGPL was as high as any in professional ball, and later spoke of this period as “his happiest” of all his baseball days.
He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1961.
Max Carey died at age 86 on May 30, 1976 in Miami, Florida.
A large part of this biography comes from the SABR Baseball Biography Project written by John Bennett. It can be found online at http://bioproj.sabr.org
In this inning we’ll open up the Baseball Dictionary
Under the letter: M
Makeup
The attitude and poise of a player; a players character.
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