This post is kind of
an interesting follow up to my Baltimore
Orioles post on Rafael Palmeiro’s Hall of Fame career from yesterday. By the time you’re done reading this you’ll understand what I mean.
I first came across this cap in Buffalo, New York
during the New Era Fan Appreciation (CrewEra13) event back on June 24th.
When the time came to go on our totally bitchin’ shopping spree I saw this
sitting underneath an old school Kansas City Athletics cap and made no mention
that I even noticed. Why? Because I had no idea what it was. Upon first glance
I could tell it was a St. Louis Cardinals cap of some variety, but outside of
that I couldn’t pinpoint a timeframe. This became especially frustrating
because I couldn’t get my phone to work in order to look it up to see if it was
worth scooping up. So, without any real knowledge behind it, I let it sip
through my fingers. When we got to the marketing part of the tour and we were
shown the bevy of Turn Back the Clock caps New Era had in store for the season,
that’s when everything had come into the light. However, still knowing what I
did then, I still let it go.
It was kind of a weird move on my part for a few reasons, most
of which had to do with the fact that I rarely ever let a Turn Back the Clock
cap go unpurchased. But the one real oddity of this trip/moment was that at the
time I only owned four total Cardinals caps, all of which I have written about
(January 25th, May 1st, May 19th and June 17th).
There is still one more cap the team currently wears that I still need to
purchase, but there really is no rush in scooping that one up. As far as their
Cooperstown Collection and Turn Back the Clock caps are concerned; yes, I
really should have been more aggressive about things. Thankfully, I lucked out.
I found this one on Hat Club while they were running a sale and made sure to
out it at the top of my checkout list… but not before I did a background check.
Like a lot of caps from the turn of the 20th
century, the Cardinals “technically” only used this cap for two seasons;
however, the years in which they used it (1903 and 1906) were not the specific
year in which the Cardinals were celebrating. See, back on May 5th
of this year the Cardinals were playing on the road against their National
League Central rival the Milwaukee Brewers when the whole Turn Back the Clock
motif was presented. The timeframe that was selected was 1913, which played
more heavily as a tribute to the Brewers than it ever did to the Cardinals as
explained here…
Back in 1902 the
original American League Milwaukee Brewers moved
to St. Louis where they were known as the St. Louis Browns until
1953. With the absence of Major League Baseball in town, Milwaukee entered a new team that adopted the
Brewers name into the minor league American Association. That minor league
franchise lasted 50 years as an affiliate of the Browns, Chicago White Sox and
Cubs, Cleveland Indians and Boston Braves. Its first American Association
championship came in 1913. And that's the reason 1913 is being celebrated
today.
The Braves'
association with Milwaukee led to the demise of
the American Association Brewers in 1954 when the parent club moved from Boston to Milwaukee.
That relationship, however, would only last a little more than a decade as the
major league club moved to Atlanta
in time for the 1966 season. The American Association Brewers were moved to Toledo where they became
known as the Mud Hens. While Milwaukee
doesn't have any Major League Baseball championships to celebrate, the 1913
Cardinals hadn't yet begun their National League best run of 11 World Series
wins by that point in franchise history.
So in some crazy way, the Brewers were trolling the
Cardinals if you really break down the where each team was on a success scale
back in 1913. Clever! But, what does that have to do with this hat? Well, as I
mentioned above the Cardinals only used variations of this cap twice back in
1903…
And 1906 (right)…
Both of them featured the same style “STL” logo on the front
of the cap, but only the 1906 version comes the closest to the Turn Back the
Clock cap of 2013. So what exactly were the Cardinals wearing back in 1913?
These…
Like a lot of the Turn Back the Clock caps that I’ve written
about already, the logo on the modern cap is a new edition. Most of the caps
back in the old days really didn’t feature any kind of logo or anything too
flashy, that’s what the uniform was for. Some teams brandished across the
chest, but most stuck to sleeve patches and an occasional patch over the heart.
The 2013 Cardinals Turn Back the Clock uniforms were spot on, but I can only
speculate as to why New Era elected to go with a different cap other than the
pinstripe model shown above. My theory, because it looks cooler.
The logo on the sleeves of the road uniform had a pretty
good run as they were used from 1909 through the end of the 1917 season.
Now, due to the fact that this cap was technically only
used for the one game on May 5th I suppose I should mark it up with
something having to do with that game. Matt Holliday and Allen Craig had great
offensive nights and starting pitcher Jaime Garcia pitched eight strong innings
while only allowing one run on eight hits and one walk. But, in keeping with
the theme of the uniforms and tribute, I decided to go with something a little
more historic. Rather, something that very few people outside of historians
have ever really bothered to take a look at. For this, I had to go back to the
origin of this cap in 1903.
PD: Contrary to my last name, Christensen (it’s Danish), I
have a lot of Irish blood running through my veins which I inherited from my
mother’s side of the family. The first tattoo I ever got marked the occasion.
My heritage though, goes beyond the traditional stereotype
of drinking whiskey, eating potatoes and continually living with mistakes of
the past. I for one am proud of my heritage and conduct research regularly on
the men and women whose footsteps I have followed. This is the story of
arguably the greatest Irish-born baseball player/mind to ever take the field.
It’s not secret that Irish players have come and gone
throughout the ranks of Major League Baseball, some of the earliest players of
the games weren’t too far removed from the boat that they had stepped off of
when they picked up a bat and glove. Throughout the 144-year history of the
league there have been 47 players and two additional managers to take the field
who were born in Ireland.
The last of which was born in 1945, Joe Clearly. Prior to that, the last
Ireland-born player was in 1916. Since the 1960s the concept of foreign-born
players started very small and has quickly worked its way into a regular part
of the game. Countries like Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela have
farm systems and plenty of talent ready to burst onto the Major League scene;
however, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in the league today who was
originally born in a 150-mile circumference of the country that gave birth to
the game we’ve come to know and love.
Back in the late 1800s the United States had just gotten
finished the last war on home soil and all walks of life were taking a shine to
this new game that was spreading throughout the East Coast like a wildfire.
Despite claims that the Irish were blackballed from most jobs and contributions
to the “American Way,”
history has proven time and time again that the motto “Irish Need Not Apply” is
merely a work of fiction. With that in mind, some of the greatest players early
in baseball history were from the Emerald Isles. One of the first 46 born
before 1917 played 17 seasons from 1890-1907 and was a player/manager for 11 of
those years. His name was Patsy Donovan.
Born in Queenstown, County Cork,
Donovan established himself as the most successful Irish-born major leaguer. He
broke into organized baseball in 1886 with the Lawrence, Massachusetts
team in the New England League. In 1888 and 1889, Donovan played outfield for
the London Tecumsehs of the International Association at Tecumseh Park (today's
Labatt Park) in London, Ontario, Canada, where, in his first season in 1888, he
led the league in batting with a .359 batting average (according to the Donovan
family Web site; however, the London Tecumsehs' official scorer C.J. Moorehead,
in a 1903 copy of The London Advertiser, cited Donovan's 1888 batting
average as .398), had 201 hits, scored 103 runs and stole 80 bases. His second
season with the Tecumsehs was less successful due to a leg injury.
In 1890 he made his Major League debut in the National
League with the Boston Beaneaters, and moved to the Brooklyn Bridegrooms in
midseason; it would be the only time in his career that he played for a league
champion. In 1891 he played in the American Association (AA) for the Louisville
Colonels and Washington Statesmen; he then returned to the NL in 1892, first
with the Senators (the former Statesmen, who had joined the NL in a league
merger) before going to the Pittsburgh Pirates for most of the year. Donovan
starred with the Pirates from 1893 through 1899, notching six consecutive
seasons batting .300 and serving as player/manager in 1897 and 1899. The team
was sold late in 1899, during a time when the league was contracting from
twelve teams to eight; new owner Barney Dreyfuss brought in Fred Clarke to be
manager, with Donovan being sent to the Cardinals. He played for St. Louis from 1900–1903,
sharing the league lead in stolen bases (45) in his first season, also managing
the team in his last three seasons with them. By the end of the 1903 season he
ranked among the NL's top ten career leaders in hits and at bats, though he
would drop from among the leaders before his playing career ended. His 64
career double plays in the NL ranked one behind Jimmy Ryan's league record. He
then served as player/manager for the American League's Washington Senators in
1904, his last season as a regular.
In 1903, he broke Sam Thompson's major league record of 1401
games in right field; Willie Keeler passed him in 1906, before Donovan played
his last several games and retired with a total of 1620. In 1906, he became
manager of the Brooklyn Superbas, and made his last few playing appearances
that year, along with one more game at the end of the 1907 season. In a
17-season playing career, Donovan had 2246 hits, 1318 runs, 16 home runs and
736 RBI in 1821 games, along with 207 doubles and 75 triples. Donovan collected
302 stolen bases from 1890 to 1897 and 216 more after the statistic was revised
to its modern definition in 1898. He batted .300 lifetime and set a major
league record for career games in right field, as well as retiring among the
career leaders in total games (fifth, 1813), assists (ninth, 264) and double
plays (fifth, 69) as an outfielder.
Donovan joined the Boston Red Sox as a scout in 1909, and
managed the team in 1910 and 1911. As a major league manager, he compiled a
684-879 record (.438) in 11 seasons. He was also instrumental in bringing Babe
Ruth to the Sox in 1914 through his acquaintance with one of the Xaverian
Brothers who coached Ruth at a Baltimore
orphans' home. Later he went to the International League, where he led Buffalo to pennants in 1915 and 1916, and also managed Jersey City in 1921–22
and 1925–26. He finished out his career coaching High School baseball at Phillips Academy
in Andover,
where he coached the future 41st President, George H.W. Bush. Crazy!
Donovan died at the age of 88 in Lawrence,
Massachusetts on Christmas Day 1953, and is
interred at St. Mary
Cemetery in Lawrence.
Despite his accomplishments throughout the history of the league, let alone the
game, he is not in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Based on the time frame
in which he played, his accomplishments should have gotten him in. He was a
hell of a hitter, almost average by the standard of those days, but his is
still one of the greatest defensive players to ever take the field. And yet,
men who played less years and accomplished less than he did have found their
way into the Hall by the Veteran’s Committee. None of it makes much sense.
It always bothered me that this particular turn back the clock didn't really turn back into anything authentic. Otherwise I probably would have picked it up. Another great post.
ReplyDeleteI know, right!? That was definitely something that has really bothered me about a lot of the Turn Back the Clock caps. Anything that uses a patch should be mentioned as so, as to not confuse anyone.
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