Clark Griffith – Society
for American Baseball Research (sabr.org)
original article written by Mike Grahek
researched by Carrie Birdsong
of duration, as a player, manager, and executive, it was one of the longest ever, spanning nearly 70 years. Griffith is the only man in Major League history to serve as player, manager, and owner for 20 years each. From his earliest days as a pitcher for money in Hoopeston, Illinois, to his last breath, the Old Fox, as he became fondly known, dedicated his life to baseball. A fiery competitor, he was outspoken, innovative, crafty and resourceful. He played with and against some of the pioneers of the game, was a star during its rowdiest era, manager for two decades, and was the face of baseball in the nation’s capital for over 40 years. Along the way, he won 237 games as a major league pitcher, helped to establish the American League, brought Washington its only World Series title, and could name eight U.S. presidents among his many friends.
Clark Calvin Griffith was born on November 20, 1869, in
Clear Creek Missouri, to Isaiah and Sarah Anne (Wright) Griffith. The family, including Clark’s four older
siblings, moved from Illinois before he was born, intent on farming in
Oklahoma. They ended up settling in
Missouri, staking out 40 acres near the settlement of Nevada, close to the
Kansas border. Isaiah Griffith planned
to farm the land, but the Clear Creek soil was not conducive to productive farming,
and he was forced to rely upon hunting to support his family. In February 1872, when Clark was just two,
his father was killed in a hunting accident, mistakenly shot by a neighbor
youth. His mother, at the time of the
accident expecting once more, struggled to raise six children in the rugged
frontier. For several years she
persevered, farming the land, while her eldest son Earl hunted for game to feed
the family. Adding to their hardship, as
he grew older, Clark became afflicted with a persistent ailment, eventually
diagnosed, informally, as malarial fever.
He was forced to bed for long periods, unable to assist with
chores. Ultimately, the hard life,
coupled with Clark’s health problems, prompted the Griffiths to move back to
Illinois in 1882, where they found a home in the town of Normal, near
Bloomington. Clark was about 12 at the
time.
During his early years in Missouri, he was introduced to
baseball, made popular there by soldiers returning from the Civil War. Too small and sickly to play for the local
teams, Clark nonetheless developed a love for the game and functioned as a mascot
and water boy for his hometown club.
Upon moving to Illinois, he found a more sophisticated version of
baseball played there and, although still considered too small to play for his
high school club in Normal, he played wherever possible in pickup games,
earning a reputation first as a catcher and then a pitcher.
At 17, he was offered ten dollars to pitch for the
Hoopeston, Illinois club against hated rival Danville. Clark took the money and won the game by
the end of 1877. He had entered organized ball, pitching for the Bloomington
Reds. He became that club’s star pitcher
in 1888 when it joined the Central Inter-State League. At this time, he was also enrolled at
Illinois Wesleyan University, but never completed his studies there. In July, Bloomington played an exhibition
game against Milwaukee, a Western Association team, and Clark so impressed
Milwaukee manager, James Hart (later owner of the Chicago Cubs), that he
was offered a contract for $225 a month.
Griffith starred for Milwaukee during the next three seasons until he
caught the eye of Charlie Comiskey.
Comiskey convinced him to jump to the American Association in 1891,
where he pitched well, going 11-8 for the St. Louis Browns but was released in
mid-July when he developed a sore arm.
He caught on with the Boston club near season’s end, but when the
Association disbanded, Clark was again looking for work.
He toiled successfully the next two years in places like
Tacoma, Washington; Missoula, Montana; and Oakland, but the leagues, like many
in that era, were unstable, and the paychecks were uncertain. With Oakland in 18933, Clark won 30 games,
while also performing in Wild West skits on stage in San Francisco’s Barbary
Coast neighborhood after the league disbanded in August. By early September, though, he was signed by Cap
Anson’s Chicago National League club.
There he found lasting fame as a pitcher, made numerous friends, and
learned about showmanship and gamesmanship from the legendary Anson. Over the next eight seasons, Griffith won 152
games, six consecutive times winning over 20, and becoming a star.
Never a power pitcher, Clark relied on wiles and control to
get batters out, using a variety of breaking balls, trick pitches, and
deceptive deliveries to befuddle his opponents.
an expert in the quick pitch, he would toss a strike over the plate
before the batter was set. He claimed to
have invented the screwball while pitching on the West Coast in the early
1890s and often experimented with the effects of friction on a pitched
ball. One of his favorite tricks was to
openly deface a new ball by gouging it on his spikes. Though the umpires did nothing to discourage
this, the Detroit club, after one particularly destructive game, presented
Griff with a bill with a bill for eleven new baseballs. After his playing days were over, he claimed
to have never thrown a spitball during his career, but it is difficult to
believe he would have ignored any opportunity to gain an advantage over a batter. “He was the first real master of slow ball
pitching, of control, reduced to a science, of using his head to outwit
batters,” said long-time New York sportswriter William B. Hanna. Chicago teammate Jimmy Callahan
opined, “I will hand it unreservedly to [Christy] Mathewson as one of
the greatest pitchers who ever lived.
But I think that old Clark Griffith, in his prime, was cagier, a craftier,
if not a brainier, proposition.”
Besides becoming a star pitcher, Clark also learned a thing
or two about the business and politics of baseball and developed into a
leader. He was the main catalyst in the
April 1900 formation of the Ball Players Protective Association, an
organization that didn’t accomplish much in the area of players’ rights, but
one that played an important part in the successful launching of the American
League. Clark met with Ban Johnson
and his old friend Comiskey to discuss the possibility of Johnson’s American
League challenging the National League as a new major league. Comiskey and Johnson were clearly supportive
of the notion, but feared, due to a lack of players, that it would be
unsuccessful. Griff assured them he
could get the players and recommended that they wait until the owners meeting
in December to do anything. When the
National League turned down an Association petition for better pay, he had the
ammunition he needed to recruit players for the new league. Immediately going to work, he single-handedly
convinced many NL stars to sign AL contracts.
Of 40 players targeted by the American League to form the foundation of
its rosters, Clark claimed to have signed all but one: Honus Wagner. Comiskey, in turn, signed Clark to manage his
Chicago White Sox.
As White Sox manager and the franchise’s star pitcher, he
won 24 games and led the club to its first major league pennant in 1901. The following year, he won 15 as the team
slipped to fourth place, but the new league was a success. Following the 1902 season Johnson moved the
Baltimore franchise to New York and named the Old Fox as manager of the
newly-christened Highlanders.
Hope was fervent that Griff could bring a pennant to Gotham,
but the Highlanders finished a disappointing fourth in their inaugural
season. Clark won 14 games in what would be his last season of full-time pitching and, although he would log around 100
innings pitched in each of the next two seasons, his appearances increasingly
were in the role of reliever. In 1904,
mainly through the machinations of Ban Johnson, New York was fortified by the
additions of Jack Powell and John Anderson, and the pick-up of Smiling
Al Orth in July helped to solidify the team in its run for the
pennant. On the season’s final day,
however, a wild pitch by Jack Chesbro denied the Highlanders a
championship. It was the closest Griff
would come to a flag in New York.
The club was up and down in the standings over the next
several seasons, sagging to sixth place in 1905, finishing second in 1906, and
falling back again to fifth in 1907. Clark announced his resignation in June 1908 as the team was beset with injuries and spiraling downward, losing 12 of 13 games. He blamed bad luck that followed the club,
intimating that perhaps it was he, himself, who was the hoodoo. A disheartened Griffith said, “It [is] simply
useless for me to continue…I have tried everything, but it [is] fighting
against fate.”
Over the next few months, Griff was deluged by offers to
manage other clubs. He made no secret of
his desire to assume an ownership role, even in the minor leagues, and for
several months he carefully considered all of his options. Finally, in December, in a
surprise move, he signed a contract to manage the Cincinnati Reds and was back
in the National League.
Under Griffith, Cincinnati finished fourth in 1909, just
nosing into the first division, distantly behind perennial leaders Pittsburgh,
Chicago, and New York. After three
straight losing seasons, the campaign had to be considered a success, but it
would mark the high point of Clark’s brief stay in the Queen City, as the Reds
dropped a notch in the standings each of the next two years. Although managerial success eluded him, Clark
managed the NL’s first Cuban ball players, Armando Marsans and Rafael
Almeida. He still longed to be an
owner, however, when the opportunity arose in 1911, he was ready to do whatever
was necessary to avail himself of it.
In September 1911, Washington manager Jimmy McAleer
made a deal to become president of the Boston Red Sox, leaving a vacancy in the
capital. Griffith’s interest in the
Senator's job was enormous for several reasons: he wanted to be an owner, he
enjoyed managing, and he wanted to return to the American League. It was a natural fit, even if it meant going
to a franchise that had never had a winning season and never finished higher
than sixth. All he had to do was come up
with the money. Turned down for loans by
his old American League friends, Ban Johnson and Charlie Comiskey, Clark risked
everything by mortgaging the Montana ranch he owned with his brother to raise
the necessary funds. He purchased a
one-tenth interest in the Washington club, became its largest stockholder, and
signed a contract in October 1911 to manage the Senators in 1912.
One of the things the other Washington owners wanted from
their new manager was someone who could develop new talent, thereby ensuring
future success, instead of trying to make a winner out of the current roster of
veterans. Clark was equal to the task, at
once releasing or trading several older players, and headed into spring
training with few certainties. The
Senators were unanimously slated for the second division by preseason
prognosticators and did nothing in the early going to dispel those
predictions. But in early June, after
the pickup of first baseman Chuck Gandil from Montreal, the club caught
fire and reeled of 17 straight wins, all on the road. Walter Johnson began a personal string
of 16 consecutive victories on his way to a new career high of 33, and the Nats
vaulted into the first division. They
remained there for the rest of the season, never seriously challenging for the
flag, but arousing Washington fandom nonetheless, and their second-place finish
was by far the best performance in franchise history.
Hopes were high the following season, but despite a
Herculean effort (36-7) from Johnson, the club spent much of the first half in
a double-digit deficit behind Connie Mack’s Athletics. A good second half salvaged another second-place
finish, with 90 wins, but that was as high as a Griffith-led team would finish
during the remainder of his managerial career.
The Senators slipped to third in 1914 and would finish no higher than
that for the next ten years.
With the onset of war against Germany in April 1917,
Griffith launched an imaginative plan to involve the nation in supporting
troops overseas. His idea was to raise
money to buy enough athletic equipment, mainly baseball gear, to outfit every
U.S. military training camp. The idea
caught on quickly and was an enormous success.
Ballparks around the country, major and minor league alike, held
Griffith Days and collected money for the effort. President Wilson contributed two bits and
donations poured in from every state. By
July over $7,500 had been raised and the first shipment of equipment sailed for
France. In July, however, the steamship
Kansas, carrying outfits for 150 teams with General John J. Pershing’s army,
was torpedoed by a German U-boat and sunk in the Atlantic. Everything was lost. Undeterred, the Old Fox mounted another
campaign almost immediately. In addition
to equipment, Griff also bought mass quantities of The Sporting News
and sent them to France to keep the troops updated on the pennant races.
Ironically enough, as a former ball-scuffing pitcher, one of
Clark’s other contributions to the game during this period was leading the
change to abolish “freak” pitches, including the spitball and the shine ball,
which helped eventually to bring an end to the Deadball Era. Although he penned essays against the
spitter, the shine ball, in particular, prompted a personal crusade by Griff,
who claimed as early as 1917 that it was unfair and should be outlawed.
Griffith continued to manage the Washington club through
1920. In December 1919, he partnered
with a Philadelphia grain broker, William M. Richardson, to purchase
approximately 80 percent of the team’s
stock, again mortgaging the family ranch to borrow his half of the required
$400,000. With the move, he became free
to make whatever changes he felt necessary to strengthen the club. There was talk for a while of running the
club for a few more years from the bench, as well as from the front office, but
he lasted only one season in the dual capacities before ending his managing
career. During his twenty years as a
manager, Clark was credited with inventing the squeeze play and with leading
the revolution toward more frequent use of relief pitchers. A vocal leader, it was estimated he was
thrown out of more games than anyone in the era outside of John McGraw.
Within four years, despite hiring four different managers,
Griffith molded a club that brought the first and only World Series title to
the nation’s capital in 1924. Proving
that it was no fluke, the Senators won the A.L. crown again in 1925, finishing
8 ½ games ahead of Connie Mack’s Athletics.
The club lost a tough World Series to the Pittsburgh Pirates, who became
the first team to rally from a 3-1 deficit to win a seven-game Series. Washington would win only one other pennant
in 1933, over the next thirty years.
During his years as owner of the Senators, and as he grew
older, Clark was perceived by turns as a shrewd judge of talent, a frugal and
resourceful owner, a sentimentalist, a curmudgeon, a horse trader, a silent and
generous benefactor, and a stubborn, outspoken voice against change unless it
was on his own terms. He is often
remembered for trading his niece’s husband, Joe Cronin, to the Red Sox
in 1934 for Lyn Lary plus a record price, and for selling his nephew, Sherry
Robertson, the A’s for $10,000 in 1952.
Both deals, however, had underlying reasons other than the bottom line
and were made, ultimately, because Clark knew they would benefit the players
involved. Griffith also became a pioneer
in signing Cuban players, whom he valued both for their skills and the fact
that they could be acquired cheaply by his confidante in Havana, scout Joe
Cambria. In Griffith’s 44 years at
Washington’s helm, 63 Cubans reached the major leagues – 35 of them with the
Senators.
As he passed his 80th birthday, Clark’s age began
to catch up with him. In December 1950,
after celebrating his 50th wedding anniversary, he underwent surgery
for a hernia. Clark had married the
former Anne Robertson in December 1900, on the eve of his becoming manager of
the White Sox. Although they had no
children together, after Annie’s brother Jimmy died in 1922, the Griffiths soon
were taking care of (though never officially adopting) the seven Robertson
children. Over the years all of them
were employed in some capacity by the Washington ball club, most notably Calvin, who took over the club’s day-to-day operations in the early 1950s and became team
president upon Clark’s death.
On October 19, 1955, Clark was admitted to Georgetown
Hospital in Washington D.C. for treatment of neuritis. He died of lung congestion on October 27,
less than a month before his 86th birthday. His old friend and contemporary, Connie Mack,
convalescing at age 92 after a hip fracture, was not told of Griffith’s
passing. Still, President Dwight Eisenhower, speaking for his family and the
nation said, “Clark was a good friend of ours and we shall personally miss him
greatly.” Griffith was buried at Fort
Lincoln Cemetery in Brentwood, Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C.
Note:
This biography originally appeared in David Jones, ed., Deadball Stars of the American League (Washington,
D.C.: Potomac Books, Inc., 2006).
Sources:
1. Washington Post. 7/11/1900, 5/25/1902,
12/09/1918, 4/22/1917, 12/19/1919, 10/29/1955,
10/28/1955.
2. Baseball Magazine, August 1916, New York Times. 6/25/1908.
Full Name: Clark
Calvin Griffith
Born: November
20, 1869, at Clear Creek, MO (USA)
Died: October
27, 1955, at Washington, DC (USA)
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