Baseball History Podcast

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 37 of the 2010 baseball season

In the first inning let’s take a look at This Week in Baseball History for the 2 week of September.

September 9

1939 In the first game of a doubleheader, Indian Ray Caldwell no-hits the Yankees, 3-0.

Raymond Benjamin Caldwell, nicknamed Slim, was born April 26, 1888 in Corydon, Pennsylvania.

He was known for throwing the spitball and was one of the seventeen pitchers allowed to continue throwing the pitch after it was banned in 1920.  Caldwell was once struck by lightning while pitching for the Yankees.  He recovered, finished the game, and beat the Athletics 2-1.

In 1911, his first full season in the major leagues, Caldwell became a New York Highlanders starter with 14 wins and a 3.35 earned run average.  He had what would be a career-high 145 strikeouts that year and capped off his rookie season with a shutout over Washington on September 1.

He served notice that he was skilled with the bat too.  He was hitting .373 when The Sporting News featured his hitting on July 6; a few days later he three-hit the Browns and got three hits himself.  He finished with a .272 batting average and 17 runs batted in.

The slender hurler threw right handed, yet hit left-handed.  With a lanky 6′ 2″, 190-pound frame he quickly earned the nickname “Slim.”

Baseball historian Fred Lieb once wrote that Caldwell had an easy, effortless delivery and a temperament to go with it.  He had a disarming smile that the ladies found attractive.  He also had a good fastball, sharp-breaking curve, and even an “underhand ball” which led the Detroit News to see him as “the second Matty.”

Caldwell was hampered by an arm injury the next two years.  He started slowly in 1912.  On June 7 in Cleveland, he finally had a strong outing, carrying a shutout into the fifth inning, when something popped in his shoulder.  He hardly pitched for about a month.

In early July manager Harry Wolverton fined Caldwell $250 and suspended him indefinitely for not reporting.  While he threw a couple of shutouts after he came back from the suspension, he was also rocked for 12 or more hits three times.  Caldwell finished the season with an 8-16 record and a 4.47 earned run average.

Just before the start of the 1913 season, Caldwell inaugurated Brooklyn’s new ballpark, Ebbets Field, in an exhibition game with the Dodgers.  After a 2-1 loss to Boston on April 14, his arm trouble resurfaced.

The New Yorkers were now called the Yankees and played their home games in the Polo Grounds.  Caldwell made numerous appearances as a pinch hitter and pinch runner, as well as some relief appearances.  In late July, he was leading the American League in hitting with a .421 batting average.  He finished at .289.  His season numbers reflected his versatility that year: while Caldwell pitched in 27 games, he appeared in 59 games.

On July 31, the “rejuvenated…discard pitcher” threw a four-hitter against the White Sox.  He was consistent the rest of the season, including two shutouts, a two-hitter and a three-hitter.  He finished the season at 9-8 with a respectable 2.41 earned run average.  He also completed every game that he started, except for his final start.

He had a breakout season in 1914.  Early on, he was spectacular: his first three games were shutouts.  The New York Times described his three-hitter on April 17 this way: “Ray Caldwell teased the champs, the Philadelphia Athletics, with a slow, hypnotic floater, which dipped over the plate so easily that spectators in the grand stand could read Ban Johnson’s signature on the leather.”

Caldwell achieved a record of 17-9 on the sixth-place Yankees.  He had a sparkling 1.94 earned run average with five shutouts.  As in 1913, he completed all but one of the games that he started.

Caldwell pitched well that summer; he was now the Yankee’s ace.  On July 27, he shut out the White Sox, and beat the Indians on the 31st for his 17th win.  The season had more than two months to go; yet Ray Caldwell had won his last game.

Caldwell showed his potential for greatness that year, but also his seeds of self-destruction.  In August, after a couple of losses, he again disappeared on a western road trip.  Manager Frank Chance had warned him back in March that he wouldn’t tolerate the pitcher’s drinking.  He twice fined him during spring training for violating curfew and then not reporting the next day.

The tension between the fun-loving pitcher and the club’s stern taskmaster was never far from the surface.  Caldwell was a happy-go-lucky fellow who loved the nightlife of the big city and never took training rules seriously.

With penalties totaling $900 for the season, Caldwell left his team and responded to the overtures of the Federal League.   Although he was under contract to the Yankees for the following season, he signed with Buffalo on September 12, 1914 and got a $2,500 advance.

On that very day, Frank Chance announced his resignation as the Yankees’ skipper.

Caldwell had appealed to team owner and president Frank Farrell to rescind his 1914 fines.  Farrell agreed, perhaps hoping such a reversal would prevent Caldwell from jumping to the rival Federal League and secure his return to the Yankees.  When Chance learned of this overruling of his authority, it was the proverbial “last straw.”

As 1915 began, the New York Yankees had new owners who hired former Detroit pitching star Bill Donovan as manager.  Jovial and easygoing, Donovan immediately set out to bring Caldwell back to the team.  Caldwell was offered three years at $8,000 or $9,000 each, which was more than Buffalo had offered.  The deal was finalized by early January.  The Yankees sent $2,500 of that first year’s salary back to the Bisons to keep them from filing suit.

It was reported that during the time that Walter Johnson and Caldwell were both flirting with the Federal League, Washington team president and manager Calvin Griffith offered Johnson to the new owners of the Yankees for Caldwell.  American League president Ban Johnson advised the New York owners not to accept the deal because Caldwell was so talented and had so much potential.  Caldwell’s 17-9 won/loss record, despite missing two months of the season, and his 1.94 Earned Run Average compared favorably with Johnson’s 28-18 and 1.72.

The World’s sports editor, Walter Trumbull, showed remarkable insight into the essence of Ray Caldwell.  On June 13, 1915 he wrote, “Caldwell is a boy who really likes to play baseball.  When he is in condition, he is a great pitcher—one of the greatest in the game.  This season he appears to be taking his profession seriously.

“Certain men, such as Ty Cobb and John McGraw, cannot bear to lose.  If it is only pitching pennies at a crack, they put their whole heart into it.  If the soul of Caldwell ever burns with this flame; if he ever acquires this fierce ambition to be better than the best, he will make a name for himself that will last as long as the game endures.”

Caldwell finished the 1915 season with a 19-16 record and a 2.89 earned run average.  The Yankees faded to 69-83 and finished in fifth place.

Caldwell opened the 1916 season with a classic 11-inning loss to Walter Johnson and Washington, by the score of 3-2.  In early July, He beat Johnson and the Nationals with a 1-0 three-hitter, also an 11-inning game.  His lack of support from Yankee bats continued, as he lost by the scores of 2-1 and 1-0 in the next few days.  Once again, Donovan’s Yankees started strong and held onto first place into July.  Then the team experienced a tidal wave of injuries to many of its key players, including a shattered kneecap to Caldwell.  He returned on July 25 and was hammered by the White Sox, 13-8.

The team fell out of the pennant race, and the pitcher fell off the wagon.  When Caldwell didn’t report to the team in mid-August, after a $100 fine and 15-day suspension, Donovan suspended him again, this time for the balance of the season.  Caldell finished with a 5-12 record, though his 2.99 earned run average was only slightly higher than the previous year’s.

There was no word that winter of Caldwell’s whereabouts.  The Yankees’ owners were still seething over Caldwell’s leaving the team in the lurch the previous summer.  They wondered aloud to New York reporters why the team should pay a high salary to such a bad influence on other players.  Even Bill Donovan announced that he would no longer tolerate Caldwell’s foolishness.

When Caldwell finally showed up at the Yankees’ spring training camp, he was tan and fit, ready for a big season, and a week late.  The Yankees decided to give him another chance, in part because so much of their success depended on his arm and in part because he was in the last year of his contract.  As many times in the past, he was contrite, saying he had learned his lesson.

On June 17, he pitched in New York’s first Sunday game, a 2-1 loss to the Browns.  On June 23, he beat the Athletics twice.  He was lifted after six innings of the first game with a 9-0 lead, and then threw a complete-game 2-1 victory.  He often seemed to do his best against the A’s and had a real admirer in their manager, Connie Mack, who said, “Put Ray Caldwell on a winning team and he would be one of the greatest pitchers of all time.”

Just a few days later, Ray Caldwell was fined $100 and suspended for ten days.  He was out all night and once again missed curfew and failed to report the next day.  Shortly after, Connie Mack offered outfielder Amos Strunk, who had hit .316 in 1916, in trade for Ray.  The Yankees turned the deal down.

Flashes of brilliance interspersed with legendary escapades.  The day Caldwell returned from his suspension he pitched 9 & 2/3 innings of shutout ball in relief.  That very night, he was arrested by St. Louis police and charged with grand larceny for stealing a $150 ring from a Mrs. Lucy Dick.  New York immediately offered to trade him to the Browns for second baseman Del Pratt, but St. Louis turned this deal down.

Caldwell ended 1917 with a 13-16 record.  For the third year in a row, his earned run average fell between 2.86 and 2.99.  Bill Donovan did not survive past the end of the season. Once again, the Yankees were a disappointment; only this year, they were never in the thick of the pennant race. Miller Huggins, the skipper of the St. Louis Cardinals, replaced Donovan as Yankee manager.

Ray Caldwell was the first player Huggins met with, and the skipper set out his expectations.  Huggins had considered including Caldwell in the big Del Pratt trade he pulled off in January, but instead included another Yankee pitcher.  After Huggins signed him to a 1918 contract, Caldwell told the Washington Post he’d win 30 games that year.

Huggins assigned two private detectives to Caldwell, to keep him out of trouble and away from bars, yet he was often able to elude them.  After tearing a muscle in his knee during spring training, he was totally ineffective in his first few starts and later developed a sore arm.  The Yankees once again had a summer fade, and by the start of August, they were in fourth place, ten games back.

Caldwell threw his only shutout of the season on August 1, yet in mid-August he left the Yankees and joined a shipping company.  Both the shipbuilding and steel industries had baseball teams and were considered “essential services,” vital to the allied war effort.  During World War I, a number of players joined such companies and were thus able to avoid the military draft.  They had what were considered “soft jobs” and often earned $500 a week, representing their companies on the ball field.

Yet Caldwell had left without notice before the end of the season.  He finished with a 9-8 record, and once again, his earned run average was around 3.00, at 3.06.  Miller Huggins had enough of Caldwell and in December sent the talented yet troubled pitcher to the Red Sox in a multi-player trade.

Caldwell’s stay in Boston was short.  The team released him in early July.  While he had a 7-4 record, his earned run average was 3.96.  His Boston road roommate was another lover of nightlife, Babe Ruth.  It now appeared that Ray Caldwell’s major league career had come to an end.

Yet on August 19, Tris Speaker, the manager of the Cleveland Indians, signed the 31-year-old.  There was no question that Caldwell still could contribute.  The question revolved around his erratic behavior.  Speaker used a remarkable approach of reverse psychology.  In his team history, The Cleveland Indians, Franklin Lewis relates the story of Ray’s reviewing the contract.

“Slim buried his head in the printed sheet.

‘After each game he pitches, Ray Caldwell must get drunk.  He is not to report to the clubhouse the next day.  The second day he is to report to Manager Speaker and run around the ball park as many times as Manager Speaker stipulates. The third day he is to pitch batting practice, and the fourth day he is to pitch in a championship game.’

.

“Slim looked up ‘You left out one word, Tris,’ he said.  ‘Where it says I’ve got to get drunk after every game, the word not has been left out. It should read that I’m not to get drunk.

“Speaker smiled. ‘No, it says that you are to get drunk.’ Slim shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘Okay, I’ll sign,’”

It worked.  Caldwell started six games at the end of a season shortened because of the recently concluded World War.  He won five of them, with a 1.71 earned run average.

On August 24, in his first start in Cleveland’s League Park, Caldwell led the Philadelphia Athletics 2-1, with two outs in the ninth.  Suddenly, bolts of lightning clustered over the ballpark.  Sparks danced along the metal railings.  Then Caldwell was hit by the lightning and knocked down, unconscious.  One account said that the bolt had entered the metal button on the top of his cap and exited the metal spikes of his shoes.  Ray later told the ClevelandPress, “It felt just like somebody came up with a board and hit me on top of the head and knocked me down.”  A few minutes later, he arose and insisted on finishing the game.  He quickly retired the final batter to preserve the win.

Then, on September 10, Caldwell tossed a 3-0 no-hitter against his old team, the New York Yankees. The game propelled the Indians to a 10-game winning streak that brought them just short of the pennant.

Caldwall and the Indians picked up in 1920 where they left off in 1919. He had picked up the spitball in 1919 and was designated as one of the 17 pitchers who could continue to throw the pitch even after it was banned early in 1920.

He was not overpowering during the 1920 season.  Opponents had a .303 batting average against him this year, and he gave up well over a hit an inning.

Despite the death of shortstop Ray Chapman in August, the Indians won their first pennant, edging the White Sox by two games.  Cleveland was led by three 20-game winners.  One was Ray Caldwell at 20-10.  His 3.86 earned run average was almost a full run higher than his previous seven seasons, yet this was the first year of the Lively Ball Era.  The league’s earned run average rose about one run higher than it had been in the previous decade.

After the Indians and the Brooklyn Robins split the first two games of the World Series, Caldwell got the nod to start Game 3.  After a decade in the majors, he had finally reached the big stage.  He did not make it out of the first inning.  He gave up two runs in 1/3 of an inning on a walk, an error and two hits.  Perhaps because Caldwell had been less effective as the regular season came to a close, Speaker did not stay long with him.  Caldwell did not appear again in the World Series, which the Indians won.

In 1921, Speaker moved Caldwell to the bullpen.  After starting 33 of his 34 games in 1920, he started only 12 of his 37 appearances in 1921.  In early September, Speaker suspended him for violating “rules of discipline.”  He was “up to his old tricks.”  When Ray begged for forgiveness, Speaker reinstated him.  The cycle that had been vintage Ray Caldwell was playing out again.

He bounced back with two of his six 1921 wins; his only shutout of the year, over the Athletics, and a 5-1 win over Boston.  The latter game pulled the Indians into a tie for first place with New York. A few days later, Caldwell went to the mound against the Yankees, with his Indians still tied for first.  He was driven from the mound in the second inning, and the Yankees went on to slaughter the Indians, 21-7.  The Indians never recovered, the Yankees won their first pennant, and Ray Caldwell never started another major league game.

Ray next embarked on a twelve-year minor-league career.  Early in 1932, Ray injured his knee and was on crutches the rest of the season.  He played briefly in 1933 before retiring for good.  Ray finished his playing career having pitched more than 2,200 innings with 133 wins in the majors and 2,200 innings with 159 wins in the minors.

Ray Caldwell was known as much for his extracurricular activities as for his mound exploits.  Fred Lieb wrote in The Sporting News, on April 27, 1933, “He was one of the playboys of his time.  Caldwell loved baseball, but he loved the high lights better.”

On March 14, 1924 in a column in the Francisco Chronicle Miller Huggins looked back at his erratic pitcher:

“Caldwell was one of the best pitchers that ever lived, but he was one of those characters that keep a manager in a constant worry.  If he had possessed a sense of responsibility and balance, Ray Caldwell would have gone down in history as one of the greatest of all pitchers.”

Ray Caldwell died on August 19, 1967 in Salamanca, New York.

A large part of this biography comes from the SABR Baseball Biography Project written by Steve Steinberg.  It can be found online at http://bioproj.sabr.org

In this inning we’ll open up the Baseball Dictionary

Under the letter: A

Away game

A game played on the other team’s field, as opposed to a home game. The 162-game major-league schedule comprises 81 away games and 81 home games.

If you would like to a part of Baseball History Podcast, submit your written contribution for the tour segment.  I will only be doing the tour when one is sent in by a listener.  You can do the segment on any stadium or team; past or present; Minor League, Major League, Negro League or any league outside of the US.  Write about 1 page in a conversational tone, send it to me, I will record it, and you will get the credit.

You can email me at baseballhistory@gmail.com.

You can follow me on Twitter; I’m BaseballHistory.

Look for the new BHP web site at Baseball History Podcast at baseballhistorypodcast.com.

Well, that’s it for today’s game of Baseball History Podcast.  I’ll see you later at the ballpark.