Fred Clifford Clarke (October 3, 1872 – August 14,
1960) was a
Major League
Baseball player from
1894 to
and
manager from
1897 to 1915.
A Hall of
Famer
, Clarke played for and managed both the Louisville Colonels and Pittsburgh Pirates. He was a
left fielder and left-handed
batter.
Of the nine pennants in Pittsburgh franchise history, Clarke was
the
player-manager for four of them.
He and fellow Hall of Famers,
Honus
Wagner and
Vic Willis, led Pittsburgh
to a victory over
Ty Cobb and the
Detroit Tigers in the
1909 World Series. Clarke
batted over .300 in 11 different seasons.
His 35-game
hitting streak in
1895 was the second-longest in
major league history at the time and is still tied for
eleventh-longest. For six years, Clarke held the major league
record for wins by a manager.
Early life and career
Fred
Clarke was born on a farm near Winterset, Iowa
. At age two, his family moved as part of a
covered wagon caravan from Iowa to Kansas
before
relocating to Des Moines,
Iowa
five years later. As a child in Des Moines,
Clarke sold newspapers for the
Iowa
State Register where his boss was future Baseball Hall of Fame
member,
Ed Barrow.
Clarke played baseball
with local teams in Des Moines and Hastings, Nebraska
. He was in the Southern League at age 21 and
played for teams in Montgomery, Alabama
and Savannah, Georgia
.
Clarke was discovered in the
minor
leagues by Louisville part-owner,
Barney Dreyfuss, and joined the Colonels in
1894. In his first game, he
collected five
hit in five
at bats which is still a major league record. In his
second season, he asserted himself with a batting average of .347,
191 hits and 96
run which were all
best on the team by far. In 1897, Clarke took over managerial
duties while only 24 years old. As a player, he hit a career high
.390. Only the best average of
Willie
Keeler's career stopped Clarke from winning his only batting
title. (For many years, Clarke's 1897 average was listed as .406
but further research led most official sources, including
MLB.com, to list it at .390.) Despite Clarke's
excellent hitting and the presence of fellow Hall of Famers,
Honus Wagner and
Rube Waddell, the team struggled for several
years. While in Louisville, Clarke was teamed up with pitcher,
Chick Fraser. Clarke and Fraser became
brothers-in-law when they married
sisters. When the Colonels folded, Barney Dreyfuss became the owner
of the Pittsburgh franchise and tapped Clarke, Wagner, Waddell,
Deacon Phillippe, and others to
accompany him.
Pittsburgh
In 1900, Clarke joined the
Pittsburgh
Pirates as a player and manager, roles he would embrace until
his retirement in 1915. was arguably the best hitting season of
Clarke's career as he led the major leagues in
slugging average and
OPS and led the National League in
double. He finished second only to
his teammate, Honus Wagner, for the National League batting title.
In the
first World Series, Clarke
hit .265 but
Boston's
Cy Young and
Bill
Dinneen outpitched Pittsburgh overall and won the series in
eight games.
In the
1909 World Series, Clarke
batted only .211 but hit both of Pittsburgh's home runs and had
more home runs and RBI than any player on either team. Clarke also
set a record for most walks for one player in a World Series game
with four in Game 7.
On August 23, 1910, Clarke recorded four
assist from the outfield in one game,
tying a major league record. The following season, his last as a
regular player, 38-year-old Clarke made ten
putouts in left field in one game on April 25, 1911.
Clarke played just 12 more games after 1911, the last three as the
oldest active player in the majors.
Clarke finished his career with a .312 batting average and is
seventh on the all-time
triple
list with 220. He led his team to four
National League pennants (1901, 1902, 1903
and 1909) and one
World Series
championship (in 1909). The 1902 Pirates lost only 36 games under
Clarke's guidance, a modern-era record. In , Clarke passed
Cap Anson and
Frank
Selee, giving him the major league record for wins by a
manager. Clarke's record, in turn, was broken by
John McGraw in . In addition to the
four pennants and one World Series, Clarke managed Pittsburgh to
five second-place seasons and three third-place seasons.
After his playing days
After his managing days ended in 1915, Clarke eventually returned
to the Pirates, first as a
coach,
later as a vice president and assistant manager. As an assistant to
Barney Dreyfuss in 1926, he was allowed to sit on the Pirates'
bench but, on August 13, players requested that he be removed.
Instead, Pirates ownership responded by releasing veteran players,
Carson Bigbee and
Babe Adams, and
waived slumping
veteran (and eventual Hall of Famer),
Max
Carey.
Fred
Clarke was selected to the Baseball Hall of Fame
in 1945 as one of the
first to be elected by the Old-Timers Committee. He was one
of 24 original inductees into the
Iowa Sports Hall of Fame in 1951.
After his
baseball days, Clarke retired to his "Little Pirate Ranch" near
Winfield,
Kansas
, which he had purchased with a down payment during his first year in the
majors. Fred Clarke died in Winfield at age 87.
Hall of Fame voting
See also
References
- Fred Clarke at the National Baseball Hall
of Fame and Museum
External links
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