Adrian Constantine Anson (April 17, 1852 – April
14, 1922), known by the nicknames
"Cap" (for
"Captain") and
"Pop", was a
professional baseball
player in the
National
Association and
Major League
Baseball. He played a record 27 consecutive seasons, and was
regarded as one of the greatest players of his era and one of the
first superstars of the game.
Anson spent most of his career with the
Chicago Cubs franchise (then known as the
"White Stockings" and later the "Colts"), serving as the club's
manager, first baseman and, later in his tenure, minority owner. He
led the team to five
National League
pennants in the 1880s. Anson was one of baseball's first great
hitters, and was the first to tally over 3,000 career hits.
His contemporary influence and prestige are regarded by historians
as playing a major role in establishing the racial
segregation in professional baseball
that persisted until the late 1940s. On several occasions, Anson
refused to take the field when the opposing roster included black
players.
After retiring as a player and leaving the Colts, Anson briefly
managed the
New York Giants. He
ran several enterprises in Chicago, including opening a billiards
and bowling hall and running a semi-professional baseball team he
dubbed "Anson's Colts". Anson also toured extensively on the
vaudeville circuit, performing monologues and songs. Many of his
business ventures failed, resulting in Anson losing his ownership
stake in the Colts (by then called the Cubs) and filing for
bankruptcy.
Anson was
inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame
in 1939.
Early life
Anson was
born in Marshalltown,
Iowa
. Beginning in 1866, he spent two years at the
high-school age boarding school of the University of
Notre Dame
after being sent there by his father in hopes of
curtailing his mischievousness. His time away did
little to discipline him, and soon after he returned home his
father sent him to the University of Iowa
, where his bad behavior resulted in the school
asking him to leave after one semester.
Professional career
National Association
Anson played on a number of competitive baseball clubs in his youth
and began to play professionally in the
National
Association (NA) at the age of 19. His best years in the NA
were and , when he finished in the top five in
batting,
OBP (leading the league in 1872), and
OPS. His numbers declined
slightly the following two seasons, but he was still good enough
that
Chicago White Stockings
Secretary-turned-President
William
Hulbert sought him to improve his club for the season. Hulbert
broke league rules by negotiating with Anson and several other
stars while the season was still in progress and ultimately founded
the new
National League to forestall
any disciplinary action. Anson, who had become engaged to a
Philadelphia native in the meantime, had second thoughts about
going west, but Hulbert held Anson to his contract and he
eventually warmed to the Windy City.
Chicago White Stockings/Colts
The White Stockings won the first league title, but fell off the
pace the following two seasons. During this time, Anson was a solid
hitter, but not quite a superstar. Both his fortunes and those of
his team would change after Anson was named captain-manager of the
club in 1879, hence the nickname "Cap", although the newspapers
typically called him by the more formal "Captain Anson" or "Capt.
Anson". With Anson pacing the way, the White Stockings won five
pennants between and . They were helped to the titles using new
managerial tactics, including using a third-base coach, having one
fielder back up another, signaling batters, and the rotation of two
star pitchers. In the first half of the 1880s, aided by speedy
players like
Mike Kelly, Anson had his
players aggressively run the bases, forcing the opposition into
making errors. After the expression first became popular, in the
1890s, he retroactively claimed to used some of the first "hit and
run" plays.
Anson shares credit as an innovator of modern
spring training along with then-Chicago
President
Albert Spalding, as they
were among the first to send their clubs to warmer climates in the
South to prepare for the season. On the field, Anson was the team's
best hitter and run producer. In the 1880s, he won two batting
titles (1881, 1888) and finished second four times (1880, 1882,
1886-87). During the same period, he led the league in RBIs seven
times (1880-82, 1884-86, 1888). His best season was in 1881, when
he led the league in batting (.399), OBP (.442), OPS (.952), hits
(137), total bases (175), and
RBIs
(82). He also became the first player to hit three consecutive
home runs, five homers in two games, and
four doubles in a game, as well as being the first to perform two
unassisted
double plays in a game. He is
one of only a few players to score six runs in a game, a feat
accomplished on August 24, 1886.
Anson signed a ten-year contract in 1888 to manage the White
Stockings (which, because of a typographical error he failed to
spot, ended after the 1897 season instead of 1898), but his best
years were behind him. He led the league in walks in 1890 and
garnered his eighth and final RBI crown in , but declined
precipitously thereafter. On the managerial front, he failed to win
another pennant.
As the end of the 1880s approached, the club had begun trading away
its stars in favor of young players, with the exception of the
veteran Anson. Local newspapers had started to call the team
"Anson's Colts", or just "Colts", before the decade was out. With
the advent of the
Players' League in
1890, what little talent the club still had was drained away, and
the team nickname "Colts", though never official, became standard
usage in the local media along with variants such as (Anson's)
White Colts and (Anson's) Broncos.
He also mellowed enough that he became a fatherly figure and was
often called "Pop". When he was fired as manager after the season,
it also marked the end of his 27-year playing career. The following
season, newspapers dubbed the Colts the "Orphans", as they had lost
their "Pop".
Racial intolerance
Anson was well known to be
racist and refused
to play in exhibition games versus dark-skinned players. This
attitude was not considered unusual in his day, and Anson remained
very popular in Chicago while playing for the White Stockings. On
August 10, 1883 Anson refused to play an exhibition game against
the
Toledo Blue Stockings
because their catcher,
Moses
Fleetwood Walker, was
African
American. When Blue Stockings Manager
Charlie Morton told Anson the White Stockings
would forfeit the gate receipts if they refused to play, Anson
backed down. On July 14, 1887 the
Chicago
White Stockings played an exhibition game against the
Newark Little Giants. African American
George Stovey was listed in the
Newark News as the
Little Giants' scheduled starting pitcher. Anson objected, and
Stovey did not pitch. Moreover, International League owners had
voted 6-to-4 to exclude African-American players from future
contracts. In September 1888 Chicago was at Syracuse for an
exhibition game. Anson refused to start the game when he saw
Walker’s name on the scorecard as catcher. Again, Anson pressured
his opponents to find a Caucasian replacement.
Albert Spalding and James Hart
Anson first met
Albert Spalding
while both were players; Spalding was a
pitcher for the
Rockford Forest Citys, Anson played
for the Marshalltown, Iowa team. Spalding convinced the 18-year-old
Anson to come play for the Forest Citys at a salary of $65 per
month.
In 1876, when Anson was playing for Philadelphia, Spalding and
William Hulbert lured Anson to the
Chicago team, which Spalding now managed. After signing the
contract, Anson had second thoughts (his future wife did not want
to leave her family in Philadelphia), and offered Spalding $1,000
to void the contract. Spalding held Anson to the contract, and
Anson came to Chicago in March, 1876.
Spalding retired as a player and manager after the 1877 season, but
continued as secretary, and later president, of the White
Stockings. Anson became a player/manager of the team in 1879, and
by 1889 had a 13% ownership.
In 1888 Spalding announced that the White Stockings, including
Anson, and a "picked nine" from the rest of the National League
would begin a World Tour after the end of the season. Spalding put
up most of the money, but Anson invested $3,750 of his own. James
Hart was hired as business manager and Anson developed an intense
dislike for him.
After the Spalding stepped down as president of the Chicago club in
1891, he appointed James Hart to the position, which Anson felt
should have been his despite his dismal business record. Spalding,
however, continued to run the club behind the scenes.
In December 1892, Hart, with Spalding's blessing, reorganized the
White Stockings into a stock company. Anson was required to sign a
new contract, which ended in 1898 instead of 1899 as the previous
one had. Anson spotted the error later but said nothing, trusting
that Spalding would honor the previous terms.
Hart began to undermine Anson's managerial decisions by reversing
fines and suspensions imposed by Anson. By 1897 Anson had little
control over his players; after Anson demanded a sportswriter print
that Anson thought "the Chicago ball club is composed of drunkards
and loafers who are throwing him down", his days as manager were
numbered. Spalding invited Anson and his wife on a four week
journey to England in late November 1897. Spalding dropped many
hints on the voyage, encouraging Anson to voluntarily retire, but
Anson had no intention of doing so. Things remained in limbo until
January 29, 1898 when the Associated Press printed a statement by
Spalding: "I have taken pains as a mediator to find out from
Chicagoans how they feel about a change of management. There has
been a decided undercurrent in favor... Lovers of baseball think
that Anson has been in power too long."
Career hits total
There has been some controversy as to whether Anson should be
considered the first player ever to reach the
3,000 hit milestone. For many years, official
statistics credited him with achieving that goal.
When the first edition of
Macmillan's Baseball
Encyclopedia was published in 1969, it disregarded a rule in
place only for the season which counted
base-on-balls (walks) as hits and times-at-bat
instead of 0's in both categories as they were before and have been
since. Anson's 60 walks were removed from his 1887 hit total,
resulting in a career mark of 2,995, though later additions of the
Encyclopedia would still add 5 more hits to exactly 3,000.
The other controversy over Anson's total hits had to do with his
five years in the National Association. Neither the Macmillan
Encyclopedia editions nor Major League Baseball itself at
that time recognized the NA as being a true major league. Only
recently has Major League Baseball accepted the NA as a
de
facto major league; the MLB.com website now includes the NA
years in Anson's record, placing major league hits total as 3,418.
Anson is officially placed at seventh in the all-time leaders in
hits.
Other sources credit Anson with a different number of hits, largely
because scoring and record keeping was haphazard in baseball until
well into the 20th century. Beginning with the publication of the
Baseball Encyclopedia, statisticians have continually
found errors and have adjusted career totals accordingly. According
to the
Sporting News baseball
record book, which does not take NA statistics into account, Anson
had 3,012 hits over his career.
The National
Baseball Hall of Fame
(which uses statistics verified by the Elias Sports Bureau) credits Anson with
3,081 hits. This figure disregards games played in the NA,
but includes the walks earned during 1887 as hits.
Retirement
Anson briefly made a return to baseball managing the
New York Giants in June and July of .
He then attempted to buy a Chicago team in the
Western League, but failed after
being opposed by Spalding. In , he helped to organize a new version
of the defunct
American Association,
called the New American Base Ball Association, and was named its
president. However, at the first sign of trouble he dissolved the
league before a single game was played, drawing heated criticism
from other backers.
After a number of failed business attempts, including a
handball arena and bottled
ginger beer that exploded on store shelves, he
was later elected
city clerk of Chicago
in 1905 and then, after serving one term, failed in the
Democratic primary to become
sheriff in 1907.
In 1907, Anson made another attempt to come back to baseball,
acquiring a semi-pro team in the Chicago City League, which he
would call "Anson's Colts". Anson initially had no intention of
playing for the team, but in June 1907, at the age of 55, Anson
started playing some games at first base in an attempt to boost
poor attendance. Despite the draw of seeing Anson play, the team
did not attract much attendance, and lost money for Anson. In the
fall of 1908, Anson assembled a semi-pro football team, also called
Anson's Colts. Although the football team won the city
championship, they were not a financial success.
Some of Anson's few successful ventures were a combination
billiards hall and a bowling alley he opened in
downtown Chicago in 1899. Anson was named vice-president of the
American Bowling
Congress in 1903, and led a team to the five-man national
championship in 1904. Anson was forced to sell the billiards hall
in 1909 when faced with mounting financial problems that led to his
bankruptcy. Anson was also an avid golfer.
With the aid of ghostwriter Richard Cary Jr., Anson's memoirs,
titled
A Ball Player's Career: Being the Personal Reminiscences
of Adrian C. Anson, were published in 1900. This book
is considered the first baseball autobiography.
Anson began acting during his baseball career. In 1888, he made his
stage debut with a single appearance in Hoyt's play
A Parlor
Match at the Theatre Comique in Harlem. He also played himself
in an 1895 Broadway play called
The Runaway Colt, written
to take advantage of his fame. Later, Anson began touring on the
vaudeville circuit, a common practice for
athletes of the time, which lasted up until about a year before his
death. He first appeared in vaudeville in 1913 doing a monologue
and a short dance. In 1914,
George
M. Cohan wrote a monologue for
him, and in 1917, Cohan, with
Chicago Tribune sportswriter
Ring Lardner wrote another piece for
him, titled
First Aid for Father. Anson appeared with two
of his grown daughters, Adele and Dorothy, and would bat
papier-mâché baseballs made by Albert Spalding into the audience.
He appeared in 1921 accompanied by his two daughters in an act
written by Ring Lardner with songs by
Herman Timberg.
Anson retired from vaudeville in 1921, and continued to refuse a
pension from Major League Baseball, despite having no other income.
In April 1922, he became the general manager of a new golf club in
the South Side of Chicago.
Following a glandular
ailment, Anson died on April 14 at the age of 69 in Chicago, Illinois and
was interred at the Oak Woods Cemetery
in Chicago.
Anson was
inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame
in 1939, one of the first
19th century players selected. Over 100 years after his
retirement, he still holds several
Cubs franchise records, including
most career
RBI,
runs,
hits,
singles, and
doubles. Defensively, he also holds the
franchise record for
putouts, but also is
second in franchise history for
errors.
Personal life
In 1872 the 20 year old Anson met 13 year old Virginia Fiegal, the
daughter of a Philadelphia bar and restaurant owner. Anson married
Virginia on November 21, 1876, and they remained married until her
death in 1915. For the first seven years of their marriage, the
couple lived in Chicago during the baseball season and Philadelphia
during the off season, but eventually moved to Chicago year
around.
The Ansons had seven children, three of whom would die in infancy.
Daughter Grace was born in October 1877, son Adrian Hulbert was
born in 1882 and died four days later, daughter Adele was born in
April 1884, son Adrian Constantine Jr. was born in 1887 and died
four months later, daughter Dorothy was born in 1889, son John
Henry was born in 1892 and died four days later, and daughter
Virginia Jeanette was born in 1899.
See also
References
- (Note that Nolan
Ryan's 27 seasons are not consecutive.)
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