BOOK REVIEW Ed Delahanty in the Emerald Age of Baseball.
December 15, 2008
Ed Delahanty in the Emerald Age of Baseball. Jerrold Casway. (University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, IL, 2004). Reviewed by Art Kyriazis.
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| Ed Delahanty in the Emerald Age of Baseball by Jerrold Casway |
Professor Casway has written something more than the standard glorified biography of a ballplayer in the above-titled book about nineteeth-century Philadelphia Phillies outfielder and batting champion “Big” Ed Delahanty. Professor Casway specializes in early modern Irish history and nineteenth-century baseball, and teaches at Howard Community College in Columbia, Maryland, where he is Professor of History and Chair of the Social Sciences/Teacher Education Division.
The “Emerald Age” refers to the dominance during the 1890s of Irish-Americans in professional baseball. Prof. Casway supplies empirical data in his book demonstrating that more than forty per cent (40%) of professional major league baseball players during the 1890s were Irish-American, along with a substantial number of the most influential managers, coaches and team captains. Thus, the author concludes, this era constituted the “Emerald Age” of baseball, since these Irish-Americans were originally drawn from the “Emerald Isle,” Ireland.
At this level, “Emerald Isle” is a work of profound historiographic sociology, examining in detail the racial and ethnic compositions of the game’s players during Big Ed Delahanty’s playing career in the 1890s, and examing in further detail the various impacts this had upon the game. Weighing in at more than three hundred pages, the book is carefully researched, with footnotes, appendix, bibliography and index, much more like a scholarly work than a journalistic work.
The “Emerald Age” refers to the dominance during the 1890s of Irish-Americans in professional baseball. Prof. Casway supplies empirical data in his book demonstrating that more than forty per cent (40%) of professional major league baseball players during the 1890s were Irish-American, along with a substantial number of the most influential managers, coaches and team captains. Thus, the author concludes, this era constituted the “Emerald Age” of baseball, since these Irish-Americans were originally drawn from the “Emerald Isle,” Ireland.
At this level, “Emerald Isle” is a work of profound historiographic sociology, examining in detail the racial and ethnic compositions of the game’s players during Big Ed Delahanty’s playing career in the 1890s, and examing in further detail the various impacts this had upon the game. Weighing in at more than three hundred pages, the book is carefully researched, with footnotes, appendix, bibliography and index, much more like a scholarly work than a journalistic work.
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| Ed Delahanty's Hall of Fame Placque He was Inducted in 1945. |
To a large extent, Prof. Casway posits, the influence of the Irish-Americans drove the style of play of the two most dominant clubs of the 1890s, the Boston Beaneaters and the Baltimore Orioles, each of which won multiple National League pennants during this era.
Each club was dominated by a core of talented Irish-American ballplayers, and according “to the popular press,” writes Prof. Casway, “baseball, associated with brain, pluck and skill,” was an Irish trait. [id. at p. 124]. One columnist of the 1890s wrote, “teams need an infusion of Irish blood to make it win,” adding that “crafty Irishmen provided the sport with its generals and diplomats.” [id. at p. 127].
These two clubs’ style of play, according to the author, were in turn based on the prototypical play of the 1880s St. Louis Browns, led by Charlie “The Old Celt” Comiskey.
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| "Big" Ed Delahanty was one of five brothers to play big league baseball |
The core of the Boston club consisted of Hugh Duffy, Jimmy Collins, Tommy McCarthy, Bobby Lowe, John Clarkson, Vic Willis, Jack Stivetts, Fred Tenney, Cy Young, Kid Nichols and were coached by Frank Selee. The Baltimore Orioles core consisted of Wee Willie Keeler, John McGraw, Hughie Jennings, Steve Brodie, Bill Hoffer, Joe Kelley, Wilbert Robinson, Dan Brouthers and were coached by Ned Hanlon. Many of these players or managers would end up in Baseball’s Hall of Fame.
A second broad theme of Prof. Casway’s work is the widespread labor unrest that characterized professional baseball during the 1880s and 1890s. Rival leagues, contract jumping, players’ unions and legal wrangling over many legal issues including the so-called “reserve clause” were all part and parcel of the professional baseball game as Ed Delahanty knew it in the years of his professional career.
Prof. Casway provides us with an accurate and tightly focused recital of the rise and fall of the Players’ Brotherhood and the Players’ League of 1890, and more importantly the effects of those two entities upon Ed Delahanty, who apparently of a mind to please everyone, signed contracts with more than one league, in the end pleasing no one. This was a situation Delahanty would repeat again during the war of the American and National Leagues in 1900-1902.
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| Ed Delahanty was the greatest leftfielder in Phillies history by far |
The author suggests that Delahanty was unhappy over such matters as rival leagues, legal decisions and contract jumping, and that such things may well have contributed to Delahanty’s state of mind during the fatal episode that led to his mysterious death on board a train bound for New York in the summer of 1903.
The author strongly suggests that Delahanty was unhappy playing for Washington of the American League in the summer of 1903; further than Delahanty did not want to return to the Phillies of the National League; and in light of the George Davis decision by President Brush, had quietly opened negotiations with John McGraw of the New York Giants of the National League to sign a contract to play for McGraw in New York.
Indeed, Delahanty’s very final train ride may well have been on his way to meet McGraw to plan on his jumping clubs to play for the New York Giants. We can only speculate what the 1904-05 New York Giants, an already powerful club with Christy Mathewson, Iron Man McGinnity and George Davis, might have been like with a happy and well-paid Ed Delahanty playing left field and hitting in the middle of their lineup. The notion is tantalizing from a “what if’ standpoint; as late as 1902, Delahanty was the American League Batting Champion, and likely had some more years of good baseball left in him, even in the decline phase of his career. Moreover, by this time of his career, Delahanty badly wanted to play for a winner. This, more than any other factor, seemed most important to him by 1903—this his great desire to leave Washington (AL) and join the New York Giants and John McGraw. The New York Giants without Delahanty won the National League pennant in 1904 and 1905; with him they might well have ranked as one of the all-time great teams of history.
The main thrust of this fine book is the year by year tracking of Big Ed Delahanty’s career, along with tracking the late 19th century Philadelphia Phillies, a team that had two of the most gifted outfields in baseball history—first Sam Thompson, Big Ed Delahanty and Sliding Billy Hamilton, in the early 1890s, and later in the decade, Elmer Flick, Roy Thomas and Big Ed Delahanty. Yet despite this plethora of baseball talent in the outfield, and also having at one point Nap Lajoie at second base as well, the Phillies were never able to do any better than second place during the Delahanty years, for a variety of reasons, mainly due to lack of pitching.
The author looks at Phillies management, Phillies finances, Phillies fans, attendance and also analyzes the reasons for the teams successes as well as the teams failures at the box office and on the field during this period. In large part, the author suggests that there were problems both with team management and with team makeup.
Again, the only hole in the authors’ analysis is sabrmetrics, and those easily demonstrate that the main hole in the Phillies teams of the 1890s were on the pitching mound—Cleveland, Boston and Baltimore, when they were winning, had better pitching staffs. Where Philadelphia had Jack Taylor but no other good starters, Boston had Cy Young and Kid Nichols, Baltimore had Sadie McMahon and several other good starters, and Cleveland had several good starters.
One point that clearly comes across is that Big Ed Delahanty was one of the most feared hitters of the 1890s, and even through 1902, of this or any other time in baseball. He was a feared hitter, he hit the ball hard and far, was known for hitting home runs in an age when home runs were relatively rare, and hit lots and lots of extra base hits. He hit for power, for average, and had a high on base average. In short, he was an offensive machine.
In addition, he was one of five Delahanty brothers, all of whom played baseball in the minors or majors, and one of whom, Jim Delanty, played major league baseball for at least ten years and was a reasonably good fielder and hitter, in his best season of 1911 hitting .339 and knocking in 94 RBIs, a truly Delahanty-like season. Tommy Delanty played twelve years in the minors with a .295 lifetime batting average; Joe Delahanty played fourteen years in the minors with 170 triples; and Frank Delahanty, the “last of the ballplaying Delahantys”, played in the American Ass’n and had a lifetime average of .276, and was the last of the five brothers to pass away in 1966. [id. at p. 292]. For all five of the Delahantys, the totals are 3,596 major league games and 4,214 major league basehits. The author renders us a poem written by John F. Herne which remembers the Delahantys:
To the Delahanty Family
There’s Frank and Jim, Tom and Bill
And another one called Joe
But the greatest batsmen ever
Passed away sometime ago
Their appearance on the diamond
Brings us back to other days
When their big and famous brother
Heard the robin sing its lays
But glory waxes and wanes
Much like the silvery moon
So look out you Delahantys
That you don’t go back too soon
Ed Delahanty, “The Only Del”, was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1945, along with Roger Bresnahan, Dan Brouthers, Fred Clarke, Jimmy Collins, Hugh Duffy, Hughie Jennings, King Kelly and Jim O’Rourke.
Of Big Ed Delahanty, the author says, “Delahanty was the age’s ultimate explosive Irish power-hitter. He would have no successors. Decades after his death, his feats were reverently recited.” [id. at p. 295]. On July 13, 1896, Big Ed Delahanty hit four home runs in one game in Chicago. In 1899, Delahanty was the National League’s batting champion, with this line: a .416 batting average, 242 hits, 54 doubles, 137 RBIs, 335 total bases, 135 runs scored. The 1899 Phillies would go 94-58 that year, but that was only good enough for 3d place, 9 games back of Brooklyn. Delahanty would use only two bats that year—one weighing 45 oz., the other weighing 50 oz. [id. at p. 166].
The 1899 Phillies, perhaps one of best Phillies teams ever, would feature three twenty game winners in Pratt, Donahue and Fraser, and Roy Thomas, Elmer Flick and Nap Lajoie all hitting well over .300, with Thomas scoring 137 runs, stealing 42 bases and drawing 115 walks, Flick driving in 98 runs, and Lajoie hitting .378 and driving in 70 RBI and scoring 70 runs in just 76 games. Delahanty’s legendary career with the Phillies would ultimately consist of 1,555 games played, 2,213 hits, 1,286 RBI driven in, and 1,369 runs scored.
This is a well-written and wonderful book to read, and it is also very good in that it does not focus so much on the 1890s Baltimore Orioles, about whom too much has been written already, but rather on other aspects of 1890s baseball. It is not merely a fine biography of Big Ed Delahanty, but also the portrait of an age and a time in baseball that came and went, and will be no more.
THE END
–art kyriazis, philly/south jersey
"I think Ed was the best right-handed hitter I ever saw. Sam Crawford" id.
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