1 Owner-Operator

A survey of veteran baseball historians to determine the game’s greatest talent evaluator would likely result in numerous mentions of Branch Rickey. Bob Quinn, who knew Rickey for fifty years and was an excellent judge of talent himself, thought Rickey might have suggested another candidate. “I’d say that Rickey’s greatest ability was his tremendous judgment of players,” Quinn recalled to historian Lee Allen. “In this, he patterned himself after Barney Dreyfuss, the owner of the Pirates. He often told me that Dreyfuss was the best judge of players he had ever seen.”1

When Quinn spoke these words Dreyfuss had been dead for almost forty years and was nearly forgotten except by a few baseball historians. He had never been a scout, farm director, player-development coordinator, or general manager—none of those jobs, as we know them today, yet existed when he started in management. Unlike Rickey, Dreyfuss had never seriously played the game. He did not see his first baseball game until he was an adult. He obviously did not own a computer or a cell phone. In his early years he had to travel by train to see potential players. He did not have an organization of people to whom he could delegate work—if something needed to be done, Dreyfuss did it himself. He relied on friends and contacts throughout the country, a few newspaper subscriptions, an ever-present notebook in which he recorded everything he learned, a brilliant business sense, a large capacity for work, a superior intellect, and as keen an eye for spotting baseball players as the game has ever seen. Armed with all of this, he built the Pirates into one of history’s greatest teams and was one of the most powerful men in the sport for more than thirty years.

Before baseball teams employed people we now call “general managers,” major personnel decisions were made either by a team executive—typically the team president with an ownership stake—or by the field manager. Baseball front offices were little more than one executive with a minimal staff to help oversee the financial accounting and the necessary back-office functions such as arranging travel and managing ticket sales. Farm systems did not yet exist. Teams typically landed young talent by purchasing or drafting players from independent Minor League teams. Dreyfuss proved to be a master in this environment.

Barney Dreyfuss’s journey toward baseball began in 1882 when the seventeen-year-old emigrated from Freiburg, Germany, to Paducah, Kentucky, to live and work with relatives who operated the Bernheim Distillery, a maker of fine whiskey. Later described by sportswriter Fred Lieb as “a little energetic man of 125 pounds,” Dreyfuss spoke with a heavy German accent throughout his life.2 In Paducah he began as a barrel washer before becoming a bookkeeper, a skill he had learned in school in Germany. Within a few months he became credit manager, maintaining a grueling schedule, working long days and learning English at night.

Dreyfuss soon took a liking to the odd American sport of baseball, playing the game for recreation and ultimately organizing his own teams, using workers at the distillery and, later, local semipro players. When Bernheim moved its company headquarters to Louisville in 1888, Dreyfuss relocated and soon convinced his relatives to join him in investing in the local Louisville Colonels of the (Major League) American Association. By 1890 the twenty-five-year-old Dreyfuss served on the team’s board of directors as treasurer.

The Colonels had been a mediocre team in the association for several years, but in the chaotic 1890 season (when the rebel Players League took most of the best players from both the American Association and the National League [NL]), the Colonels won their only pennant. When the Players League folded after that single season, the Colonels returned to their losing ways. Dreyfuss continued to increase his holdings in the team and soon was named secretary-treasurer. The management of the Louisville club was fluid in the 1890s, and at a time when buying into baseball franchises was still open to men of more modest means, Dreyfuss became the largest stockholder and gained further control. Because he still held a full-time job with Bernheim, often traveling overseas for the company, his hands-on role with the Colonels was limited by his own schedule.

Dreyfuss had been an avid fan of the game for many years and later told a writer that he had a complete run of the Sporting Life, a Philadelphia-based weekly devoted mainly to baseball, going back to the mid-1880s.3 Once he got involved with the Colonels, he was not just reading the articles for pleasure, but using them to learn about the players. He devoured this publication, as well as the Sporting News, a rival newspaper published in St. Louis. In the days before teams had full-time scouts, Dreyfuss wrote everything in a dope book, which he carried with him everywhere.

Dreyfuss would develop a genius for finding ballplayers, but he also built a proto-organization. As opposed to a staff of scouts such a club might have today, Dreyfuss made and kept contacts throughout the country—former Louisville players who were now coaching in the Minor Leagues or newspapermen he had met during his travels. He communicated with these people regularly, via letter or telegraph, and supplemented the knowledge in his dope book. If one of the baseball papers was touting a Minor League player, or if Dreyfuss got a tip from someone in his network of baseball people, he often decided to look the player over. Dreyfuss usually worked at the distillery during the week, leaving the weekend for his baseball travels. If the occasion warranted, he might schedule a midweek business trip in conjunction with his scouting mission. And he had a prodigious memory. “At any time,” recalled his longtime manager Fred Clarke, “he could quote current hitting averages without looking them up.”4

Beginning in 1892, when four teams from the American Association were absorbed by the National League, and continuing for eight seasons, the “major leagues” consisted of a single twelve-team league, often called the “Big League.” The 1890s were a historically crucial period in the development of the game. Most important, in 1893 the NL established the pitching rubber, raised it up on a mound, and placed it sixty feet and six inches from home plate; following many years of experimentation, this pitching distance took hold and has remained ever since. In addition, many innovative teams and players began playing “scientific baseball,” leading to more stolen bases, bunts, hit-and-runs, and other innovations that came to define the game for the next thirty years.

Off the field, however, the game was in disarray. The league owners—who came to be called “magnates”—now had a monopoly and no longer needed to concern themselves with the interests of the players or the league as a whole. Under the ineffectual leadership of league president Nick Young, the owners broke into factions, wrangling for the benefit of their narrow interests. New York owner Andrew Freedman, the wealthiest and most despised owner in baseball, worked his own agenda for his personal benefit; large-market owners Arthur Soden (Boston), John I. Rogers (Philadelphia), and James Hart (Chicago) schemed to take advantage of the lesser capitalized franchises; the smaller-market teams, led by John Brush (Cincinnati), survived by banding together to force an even split of gate receipts. This delicate balance of power would not hold up for long.5

One thing all the owners could agree on: the players made too much money. The owners instituted salary caps, tightened their hold on their players’ contracts, and codified strict behavioral rules. Salaries plummeted. The league also became grossly imbalanced. Boston and Baltimore won the first seven pennants of the Big League, and the other ten teams generally spent the last three months of each season well out of contention. Upon joining the NL in 1892, Louisville became one of the also-rans and remained so for most of the decade. While Dreyfuss was gradually accumulating stock, his team was not winning many games. But the talent on the team was slowly improving.

Early in the 1894 season, the Sporting Life mentioned a young left fielder playing for the Savannah Modocs of the Southern Association: “Fred Clarke is playing a phenomenal game, both in the field and at the bat.”6 This one sentence was buried in a story about the Savannah club, but it is likely that Dreyfuss read this and made a note in his dope book, probably adding to what he already knew about Clarke. As a teenager Clarke, from Winterset, Iowa, had played on an amateur team managed by Ed Barrow, near the start of Barrow’s long and distinguished career. Clarke had then begun his professional career in 1893 with St. Joseph (Missouri) of the Western Association and was hitting .346 in twenty games when the league folded. He next hooked up with the Montgomery (Alabama) club of the Southern Association, hitting .306 over thirty-five games to close out the season, and then moved on to Savannah the next spring. Not long after, Dreyfuss arranged a business trip to Memphis when Savannah was playing there.7

Dreyfuss later recalled the journey. “A young, thin, rawboned little fellow was playing left field for Savannah; going after everything in sight and hitting the Memphis pitcher out of the lot.” When the Savannah catcher became ill, Clarke donned the equipment and took over, showing himself to be both the toughest and the most talented player on the club.8 According to a later account by Lieb, Savannah manager John McCloskey informed Dreyfuss that his team was broke and ready to disband and that McCloskey did not even have enough money for train fare to get his team back to Savannah. Dreyfuss offered McCloskey two hundred dollars—enough to get his team home—in exchange for Clarke’s contract.9 What we know for sure is that Dreyfuss purchased Clarke, and the twenty-one-year-old entered the Colonels’ lineup immediately. In his first game Clarke had four singles and a triple. After the season a grateful Dreyfuss hired McCloskey as Louisville’s manager.

Clarke soon became the best all-around player on the Colonels: an excellent hitter, a fine left fielder, and a ferocious base runner, one of the fiercest competitors of his era. Fred Lieb later recounted in Clarke’s obituary: “With the possible exception of [Ty] Cobb and John McGraw, baseball never knew a sturdier competitor than Clarke.”10 Indeed, Clarke was often engaged in physical encounters on the field. The 1894 Colonels were a bad team (finishing fifty-four games behind the Orioles) and, except for Clarke, a team filled with disappointing veterans with no future.

Clarke later admitted that he developed some bad habits hanging around with some of his teammates early in his career. “Barney Dreyfuss recognized it too,” he recalled, “and he called me into his office. He didn’t lecture me, he merely said: ‘Fred, you know if a man goes into any kind of business and neglects it, it will surely go the dogs.’” Dreyfuss walked out of the office, leaving Clarke to ponder what he had said. The next day Clarke returned and vowed to right the ship. “I do not think any employer ever gave a young player better counsel,” he remembered.11

Clarke hit .325 and .347 with extra-base power and great base running in his first two full seasons, but the Colonels finished last twice more. They briefly added a second promising youngster in 1895 when the Boston Beaneaters loaned them outfielder Jimmy Collins after he had begun his first season hitting .211 in eleven games. McCloskey turned him into a third baseman, and he became a great one—soon one of the best in the game. Unfortunately for Louisville, after the season Boston asked for Collins back and withstood Dreyfuss’s repeated attempts to gain his rights. Boston was willing to let Collins go only in exchange for Clarke, an offer Dreyfuss rebuffed. At the league meeting that December, Louisville was besieged with other offers for Clarke, including a seven-thousand-dollar bid from the New York Giants.12

After yet another last-place finish in 1896, Louisville started the next season 17-24 when Dreyfuss decided to jettison his latest manager, Jim Rogers. The problem with Rogers was not his managing—it was that he was hitting .144 in 153 at bats. During an era when most teams used playing managers to save money, Dreyfuss did not want to pay a manager to sit on the bench, so Rogers was released. Surprising most everyone, he hired the twenty-four-year-old Clarke to take Rogers’s place. Clarke responded to his new authority by hitting .390 with fifty-nine steals as Louisville posted a 52-78 record. At the time he took the reins, Clarke was the only good offensive player on the team other than thirty-five-year-old first baseman Perry Werden. The situation soon improved considerably.

The closest thing Dreyfuss had to a coworker with the Colonels was Harry Pulliam, a reporter and city editor for the Louisville Courier who had also served as secretary of the American Association in its waning days.13 In the early 1890s Pulliam became the business manager for the Colonels, working, like Dreyfuss, on a part-time basis, but by 1895 he had left his newspaper and become a full-time employee of the team. Two decades later a writer would say, “Harry Pulliam might be called the first of all Scouts.”14 It would be more accurate to say that everyone actively associated with a ball club—a group that generally numbered no more than a handful in addition to the owner and manager—performed scouting duties when time allowed, and Pulliam and Dreyfuss spent most of their free time during the season looking for players. As it happened, Pulliam garnered everlasting fame for his role in landing one of the best prospects any scout ever landed, though it took a fair bit of serendipity.

Honus Wagner grew up just outside of Pittsburgh and played for several Minor League teams before signing with Ed Barrow’s Atlantic League club in Paterson, New Jersey. Wagner was a large, awkward-looking man who did not seem to have a position but hit .313 for Barrow in 1896. He returned the next season and hit even better. One of his opponents took special notice: Claude McFarlan, a pitcher-outfielder who lived in Louisville but played for Norfolk. After watching Wagner go eight for twenty-one with two home runs and two triples in the season’s first few weeks, McFarlan wrote to Pulliam, who ignored the letter.15

McFarlan persisted, tracking down Pulliam in early June when Norfolk was playing in Newark and the Colonels were in New York. Ten years later Pulliam told the story at a banquet. “Fifteen years ago, down in my old home, I did a favor to a good fellow who was in hard luck,” Pulliam related. “He never forgot my kindness, which was very small. . . . For three nights the man I referred to visited the old baseball headquarters in New York, the Stuyvesant House, in order to see me. Two nights he missed me, but on the third he remained at the hotel until I returned, a very tired young man. He said, ‘You did me a good turn one time, and I am going to do you a good turn, for I have the greatest ball player in America for you in Paterson, and his name is Hans Wagner. The beauty of this man is that not only can he play ball, but he has the best disposition of any fellow you ever knew.’”16

Suitably impressed, the next day Pulliam went to see Wagner for himself, and both Clarke (soon to be named manager) and Dreyfuss joined Pulliam over the next few days. Pulliam began negotiations with Barrow that dragged on for several weeks, with other teams joining the bidding. Wagner helped Barrow’s cause considerably on July 11, when he hit three home runs, a triple, and a double in a win over Norfolk.17 Pulliam pressed his case. “I told [Barrow] of the struggle we were having in Louisville to get on our feet and begged him to let me have the man,” said Pulliam. “My efforts were successful, and he sold me the release of Wagner for $2,000 [sic]. I drew a draft on the Louisville club immediately for that sum, which I had my doubts was in the treasury, and wired Barney Dreyfuss, the moneyed man of our concern.”18 In fact, before selling Wagner to Pulliam, Barrow contacted the Pittsburgh Pirates, to whom he had earlier promised the first shot at his star. After hearing this Pulliam pleaded for more time and wired Dreyfuss for permission to up his bid. Dreyfuss agreed, and when the Pirates failed to counter, Dreyfuss and Pulliam landed their star for twenty-one hundred dollars.19 Wagner, hitting .375 for Paterson, stepped right into the Colonels’ lineup on July 19.

Wagner still had no position, but his .335 average over the rest of the season ensured that Clarke would keep him in the lineup. Wagner played mostly center field in 1897, first and third base in 1898, right field and third base in 1899, and right field in 1900. In fact, Clarke was often criticized for not finding a permanent place for Wagner, especially when Honus went into a (rare) batting slump. But wherever he played, Wagner was a star and with Clarke gave the Colonels two of the National League’s best players as the team slowly gained respectability.

After the 1897 season Pulliam, increasingly directing the club, traded pitcher Bill Hill to Cincinnati for outfielder Dummy Hoy, pitcher Red Ehret, and shortstop Claude Ritchey. Although Hoy was a fine player, he was thirty-five years old, and Ehret was at the end of the line. Ritchey proved to be the key player in the trade. As a twenty-three-year-old rookie with the Reds in 1897, Ritchey had hit a respectable .282 but fielded poorly. He struggled with Louisville in 1898 as well, but in midseason Clarke moved him to second base, which he handled much better, becoming one of the NL’S top second basemen for the next decade. Louisville inched forward again, to a 70-81 record and a ninth-place finish.

The Louisville management structure remained in flux throughout this period. The president of the team in the mid-1890s was Thomas Hunt Stucky, a local doctor who was apparently uninvolved in player acquisitions. Pulliam remained the secretary and worked full-time with the club. In early 1898 Dreyfuss, who now held a controlling share of the team’s stock, resigned as club treasurer, citing poor health.20 Pulliam took on the new duties, while Dreyfuss still spent many weekends scouting for baseball talent.

In late August he purchased twenty-year-old third baseman Tommie Leach from Auburn in the New York State League. Leach was a small man (five foot six, 150 pounds) who had surprising extra-base power for the time. Auburn had sent Leach to the New York Giants for a two-week trial, but Giants owner Andrew Freedman returned him immediately, saying, “Take your boy back before he gets hurt. We don’t take midgets on the Giants.”21 Dreyfuss paid $650, and although it took a few years for Leach to become a regular player, he would fully justify the price and effort.

After the 1898 season Dreyfuss landed another future star, drafting pitcher Charles Phillippe from the Minneapolis club in the Western League. Although the twenty-six-year-old Phillippe was no kid, with only two years of Minor League experience behind him, he had proven to be a workhorse, finishing 22-18 in 363 innings in 1898, and Dreyfuss had been logging it all in his book. Still, he remained a businessman at heart, and when Phillippe did not accept the proffered contract, Dreyfuss was ready to walk away. After the barn on Phillippe’s South Dakota farm burned down, the pitcher was ready to reconsider. “Sign with me and you will not regret it,” said Dreyfuss. Phillippe signed.22

Just one year after he felt that he no longer had the energy to maintain an official position with the club, Dreyfuss reversed course. After the 1898 season ended, he resigned his position with the distillery and become a baseball man full-time. As he now held a majority of the stock in the team, he became team president, with Pulliam remaining as secretary. Reportedly, the other stockholders had been trying to persuade Dreyfuss to take over the team for some time. He had had a major influence in team affairs, especially the acquisition of players, for many years. But now, for the first time, he had complete authority to run the club as he saw fit.23

Meanwhile, the twelve-team National League had become even more dysfunctional and mismanaged. Frank Robison and his brother Stanley owned the generally competitive but poorly supported Cleveland Spiders, and then bought the moribund St. Louis Browns after the 1898 season. Frank Robison then transferred all of the best players from the Spiders (including Cy Young, Jesse Burkett, and player-manager Patsy Tebeau) to the Browns, creating an excellent team in St. Louis, its best since joining the NL, while destroying his Cleveland club, which finished the 1899 season with 20 wins and 134 losses.

At the same time, rumors were rampant that the NL was poised to eliminate four teams and return to its preferred eight-club circuit. The depleted Cleveland and Baltimore clubs were obvious elimination candidates, but Washington and Louisville were also considered to be in danger. Dreyfuss could read the tea leaves, and there were continual rumors that he was soliciting offers for the Colonels. In December 1898 Dreyfuss was reportedly negotiating with New York’s Freedman. The Giants owner offered twenty-five thousand dollars for Clarke, but Dreyfuss had no interest in selling off his stars and being left with a shell of a ball club. Instead, he bought more stock in the Colonels and prepared to field a team for 1899.

The next sign of trouble for Dreyfuss came just prior to the 1899 season when a leaked version of an NL schedule showed that Louisville had lost most of its coveted Sunday dates, a clear sign that the Colonels were being pressured to leave the league. Louisville was one of the few NL cities that allowed their clubs to play home games on the Christian Sabbath, and the Colonels counted on a lot of home Sundays to partially make up for their small market. Dreyfuss headed off this obvious challenge and got most of his Sundays restored, but for the remainder of his years in baseball he made sure to be involved in the annual schedule-making process.

Though Dreyfuss believed his team to be on the rise, the Colonels started poorly in 1899, and stories of disgruntled players caused Dreyfuss to travel with the club in June. When it became clear that catcher Malachi Kittredge was one of the complainers and was angling for Clarke’s job, Dreyfuss released him and signed Chief Zimmer to catch. Coincidence or not, after sitting at just 16-38 on June 20, Louisville went 59-39 the rest of the way to nearly finish .500 (75-77), its best record since joining the league. Besides Wagner (.341) and Clarke (.340), the team was bolstered by fine years from second baseman Ritchey (.300) and supersub Leach (.288), whose fine play at third base forced Wagner back to the outfield. On the mound, newcomer Phillippe began his Major League career with twenty-one victories. With Louisville well out of the race, the Superbas tried to acquire Clarke and Wagner late in the season, forcing Dreyfuss to state publicly that no players would be sold under any circumstances.25

One of the more colorful characters for Louisville in the late 1890s was pitcher George Waddell, later universally known as “Rube” because of his childlike immaturity and personality. Waddell had pitched for various semipro teams in Pennsylvania before signing with Louisville and appearing twice in September 1897. Though his tenure was brief, Waddell had so annoyed Clarke that the manager sold him to Detroit in the Western League after the season, while retaining the right to recall him. After just nine games in Detroit, Waddell jumped the club and spent the rest of the summer pitching semipro ball. He returned to the Western League in 1899 with Columbus and Grand Rapids, where he fashioned a 26-8 record before Clarke finally decided to give him another shot. Waddell was excellent in this second stint, finishing 7-2 for the Colonels down the stretch, but he continued to drive the straitlaced Clarke batty by showing up late or not at all, drinking heavily, and not taking much of anything seriously. The Waddell-Clarke mismatch ultimately became more problematic, as time would tell.

Louisville’s 1899 season was dramatically marred on August 12 when a large fire destroyed the grandstand of Eclipse Park. Dreyfuss worked quickly to erect temporary stands, but they were uncomfortable and provided no shade against Kentucky’s brutal summer sun. After a twelve-game home stand ended on September 2, an unsentimental Dreyfuss announced that the remaining Louisville home games would be played on the road. Louisville ended the season on a thirty-eight-game road trip, during which they compiled a 24-13-1 record. Dreyfuss later claimed that the team would have been profitable for the first time in years, but the fire cost him his surplus. Little did anyone know that Louisville had seen its last Major League game.

Among its myriad difficulties, the NL of the 1890s was plagued by rowdyism: players fighting with umpires or other players, using profane language, and skirting the rules of the game. Fans were often no better, and brawls in the stands or attacks on umpires were common and often unpunished. Dreyfuss deplored such behavior and acted to stop it in Louisville. In early 1899 he announced that rowdy fans—including those shouting obscenities at opposing players—would be removed from Eclipse Park and not allowed to return.26 By the end of that season, the Sporting Life was singing his praises: “Anyone who has taken to follow President Dreyfuss closely has noted the fact that he has kept his Louisville club free from the ‘tough’ element in making up his team and the Colonels come nearer filling the bill of gentlemen ball players than any team playing the game professionally. Everyone on the team is well educated and knows how to use his native language.”27

Nevertheless, Dreyfuss knew his gentlemen team was in danger. After the 1899 season he renewed efforts to either sell his assets or find a way to stay in the league. Besides Wagner and Clarke, who were two of the more coveted players in the NL, he now had Ritchey, Zimmer, Phillippe, and Leach, all of whom were valuable players. At a minimum Dreyfuss negotiated with Robison of the Browns and James Hart of the Chicago Colts. In early November he struck a deal with William Kerr of the Pittsburgh Pirates, an agreement that briefly fell through before being resuscitated a month later. In the final arrangement Dreyfuss paid seventy thousand dollars for half of the Pirates and was installed as team president. As part of the transaction Dreyfuss engineered a “trade” to send Wagner, Clarke, Phillippe, Leach, Ritchey, Waddell, Zimmer, and six other players to the Pirates, in exchange for Jack Chesbro, George Fox, John O’Brien, Arthur Madison, William Gould, and twenty-five thousand dollars.28 Harry Pulliam remained behind to run the depleted Colonels.

This last move was only temporary, as in March the NL finalized its plan to drop four teams, dissolving the Baltimore, Washington, Cleveland, and Louisville franchises. Pulliam came to Pittsburgh as the club secretary, and a few other Colonels followed, including Chesbro. Dreyfuss sold Patsy Donovan, who had been Pittsburgh’s player-manager, to St. Louis, and installed Clarke.

Like the Colonels, the Pirates had not contended in the NL for several years, but the 1899 club had finished 76-73, two and a half games ahead of Louisville. They had a few promising young players, and the combined club appeared young and strong. The two best position players from the 1899 Pirates—center fielder Clarence Beaumont (.352) and third baseman Jimmy Williams (.354)—were both just twenty-two years old. Beaumont in particular was Dreyfuss’s kind of player: he did not drink or smoke and spent much of his free time coaching baseball to local kids. It was Dreyfuss who gave Beaumont his enduring nickname of “Ginger,” either because of his red hair or perhaps his hustle on the diamond. He was known as Ginger Beaumont for the rest of his life.29

The Pirates also had two good starting pitchers: twenty-seven-year-old Sam Leever (with a 21-23 record) and twenty-four-year-old Jesse Tannehill (24-14). “I am more than pleased with the deal,” said Clarke, not surprisingly, in December. “I am satisfied that the Pittsburgh Club next season will become one of the strongest ever known in the National League.”30 Indeed, the new club seemed to have just about everything covered, as table 1 shows. Only first base seemed like a weak spot, but with Wagner on board Clarke had the flexibility to solve any such problem.

Table 1. Pittsburgh club, 1900

Position	Player	Age	1899 club	1899 stats
c	Chief Zimmer	39	Louisville	.298
2b	Claude Ritchey	26	Louisville	.300, 21 stolen bases
ss	Bones Ely	37	Pittsburgh	.278
3b	Jimmy Williams	23	Pittsburgh	.354, 27 triples, 28 doubles
3b	Tommy Leach	22	Louisville	.288
lf	Fred Clarke	27	Louisville	.340, 49 stolen bases
cf	Ginger Beaumont	23	Pittsburgh	.352, 31 stolen bases
rf	Tom McCreery	24	Pittsburgh	.324
ut	Honus Wagner	26	Louisville	.341, 45 doubles
p	Jesse Tannehill	25	Pittsburgh	24-14, 2.82 ERA, 322 innings
p	Deacon Phillippe	28	Louisville	21-17, 3.17 ERA, 321 innings
p	Sam Leever	28	Pittsburgh	21-23, 3.18 ERA, 379 innings
p	Jack Chesbro	26	Pittsburgh	6-9
p	Rube Waddell	23	Louisville	7-2, 3.08

Source: http://BaseballReference.com.

C. B. Power of the Pittsburgh Leader did have one concern. “Fred Clarke is one of the grandest ball players the game has ever known,” wrote Power, “but I have serious doubts as to his abilities as a manager. Unfortunately Fred has never had the opportunity to play under a competent National League manager, and when he was placed in charge of the Louisville club he had no very clear idea of what constitutes the duties of a manager.”31 He cited Clarke’s problems with some of his charges in 1899 and credited the acquisition of Zimmer with righting the ship. On the other hand, having players solve their own problems was not atypical for the time. As Clarke’s managing style matured, he advocated personal responsibility, on and off the field, and relied on his players to learn to carry themselves properly.

With the combined Pirate team in 1900, it was thought that Clarke might play Wagner at first base, but he decided instead to position him in right field. Clarke ended up with Duff Cooley and Tom O’Brien, neither of whom hit well, at first, while both Tom McCreery and Leach, two fine players, were on the bench. The team ended up with a mediocre offense, as many of their star performers, including Clarke, Beaumont, and Williams, had off years. Wagner had the first of his many tremendous seasons—leading the league with a .381 batting average, forty-five doubles, and twenty-two triples—but no other player hit .300 or had more than twenty-two doubles. The team averaged 5.24 runs per game in a league that averaged 5.21.

The pitching staff, however, was the best and deepest in the league, though Clarke’s problems with Waddell briefly made it less so. “We all loved Rube,” Clarke later recalled. “But I knew I couldn’t stay manager long if I let him take French leave whenever he wanted. During one of his absences I went to Barney Dreyfuss and said: ‘Life is too short to monkey around with this guy. Suspend him and mail him his check.’” The Pirates instead loaned him to Connie Mack, managing the Milwaukee club in the (then minor) American League (AL), where Rube went 10-3. In September Clarke brought Waddell back, and he finished his split season with an 8-13 record for the Pirates but with a 2.37 earned run average (ERA) that led the National League. When Rube was around Clarke used five starters (Phillippe, Leever, Tannehill, Chesbro, and Waddell) in rotation, and all of them had excellent seasons. The team had started slowly (just 23-26 on July 17) but played well the rest of the year and ended up 79-60, in second place and just four and a half games behind the Superbas.

Bearing in mind the previous years’ struggles and the slow start, the 1900 season was considered a success. With much of the attention and credit landing on Dreyfuss, and with the makings of a great Pirates team in place, William Kerr, who still owned half of the club, wanted to get back in the limelight. Right after the season he offered Tannehill to Cincinnati, but made an even bolder move in December when he attempted to fire Harry Pulliam, who he believed was too loyal to Dreyfuss. This led to a contentious board meeting in December, at which Kerr and his ally Phil Auten demanded that Dreyfuss either buy them out or sell. Dreyfuss gained an advantage when Kerr and Auten made a procedural error at the meeting, and he was able to pay thirty-five thousand dollars and gain complete control of the club.

In the meantime, Dreyfuss needed a first baseman. After scouring his baseball periodicals and his dope book, he purchased the contract of Kitty Bransfield from Worcester in the Class A Eastern League, one level below the Majors. Bransfield had been a catcher who played five games for the 1898 Boston Beaneaters before being sold to Worcester. After hitting .315 in 1899, he was converted to first base and in 1900 had hit .369 to lead the EL.

During the 1900–1901 off-season, when the American League announced that it would compete as a major league beginning in 1901, Dreyfuss and his fellow National League magnates faced their first significant player-procurement challenge in many years. After a decadelong NL monopoly, big-league players once again had competition for their services, driving up salaries and changing the way teams needed to compete for players. The AL put teams in Washington, Cleveland, and Baltimore—three of the recently vacated NL cities—and signed several topflight NL stars like Cy Young, Jimmy Collins, and Nap Lajoie, with the promise of many more to come. The new reality first affected the Pirates in March when Jimmy Williams jumped the club to sign with the new Baltimore AL club. Williams had a change of heart after a few weeks and told Dreyfuss he would return to the Pirates if Dreyfuss would protect him from any legal action from Baltimore. Dreyfuss refused. Honus Wagner was reportedly offered a staggering twenty thousand dollars by the Chicago AL club (an amount possibly exaggerated), and Jack Chesbro was wooed by the Boston Americans. Both stayed put. Other than Williams, Dreyfuss managed to keep his team in the fold for 1901.

Clarke was not particularly bothered by the loss of Williams; he had Tommy Leach, at least Williams’s equal, ready to step in. With Bransfield at first, the club had a steady infield for the first two months of the season. But Clarke was growing frustrated with shortstop Bones Ely’s on-field struggles (hitting .208) and an attitude that grated on the manager. After Ely asked out of the lineup with a minor injury, Clarke told him, “Fred, if you don’t play for me today, you will never play for me again.”32 When Ely reiterated that he could not play, Clarke benched him and soon had Dreyfuss release him. Clarke played shortstop himself for a day, then asked Wagner, who instead insisted that Leach get first crack at it. Eventually, Clarke put Leach back at third and moved Wagner to shortstop for the rest of the season. Wagner had previously played six positions on the diamond, but not until the middle of his fifth season did he play the position he would come to define.

After Waddell lost his first two starts in 1901, Clarke finally decided that the circus was not worth it, and Dreyfuss sold the pitcher to the Chicago Cubs in early May. In June Dreyfuss signed outfielder Lefty Davis, formerly of the Superbas; Davis was hitting just .209 in his rookie season and rarely playing, but with the Pirates he stepped into Wagner’s old right-field post and hit .313 the rest of the year.

The 1901 Pirates played .500 ball for a few weeks, but took over first place in early June and cruised the rest of the season, finishing 90-49. Unlike the 1900 club, this team had outstanding offense to match its pitching. Wagner hit a predictable .353 with power, but Clarke, Beaumont, Davis, and Leach also hit over .300, while Ritchey and Bransfield were just under. The team finished second in the league in runs scored, while its defense allowed the fewest.

Typical of the Pirate staffs, none of the pitchers had gaudy win totals for the era because Clarke usually used four or five starters in rotation. Phillippe (21-12, 2.22), Chesbro (21-10, 2.38), Tannehill (18-10, 2.18), and Leever (14-5, 2.86) were nearly interchangeable, while Ed Doheny, picked up in July to take Waddell’s spot, finished 6-2, 2.00. In the decade of 1901–10 there were sixty-nine pitcher seasons of 300 or more innings pitched in the National League, but a Pirates pitcher accomplished this feat only twice. The Pirates did, however, have four of the best ten ERAs in 1901.

No one was happier over the success of the Pirates than Barney Dreyfuss, in his first season of full control. The newspapers often remarked that he stood out among his fellow owners as much more than a businessman. “He never misses a game played at Exposition Park,” raved Baseball Magazine a few years later, “and he never fails to keep a detailed score of the contest.” He often discussed plays with the official scorer after the game, and he told Clarke if there was a managerial decision during the game with which he differed. In fact, he and his manager often had heated disagreements. Years later Clarke recalled: “Once I talked nasty to him and went back to try to apologize the next day. He stopped me. ‘Fred,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t give a damn for any guy who always tries to agree with me.’”33

“So much has been said of Barney Dreyfuss as a wise owner,” recalled Wagner, “a smart trader and a man who understands every angle of the baseball business that few know of him as a fan. If you ever sat next to him in a grandstand in the old days, though, you know him by sight and you’d never think the rooter next to you was the owner of the Pittsburgh club. Mr. Dreyfuss would travel with the team, mix up with the players and engage in many of their games, their amusements. He would mix up in practical jokes and give and take. But above all things, he was crazy to see his ball club win.”34 His ball club was winning now.

The American League was a magnificent success in 1901, matching the NL in attendance and getting through the season without overt financial difficulties. After the season the Milwaukee AL club was replaced by St. Louis, giving the upstarts a fourth city directly competing with the established NL. There were persistent rumors that the AL would move the Detroit club to Pittsburgh, but Dreyfuss worked to ward this off by renting plots of land where a stadium might be built. He also again managed to keep his players in the fold for the 1902 season amid further raiding of the NL by the new league.

Among the AL’s advantages in the war were united owners, the strong leadership of league president Ban Johnson, and the significant financial backing of Cleveland magnate Charles Somers. The NL, meanwhile, remained in chaos. The feud between the league’s two strongest owners, Brush of Cincinnati and Freedman of New York, often had league-wide ramifications. Brush was deeply involved in every aspect of the league and had been responsible for the NL’s somewhat united efforts to keep salaries down. He resented Freedman’s place as owner of the New York Giants, since Brush had wanted the New York franchise himself.

Freedman, closely connected with the corrupt Tammany Hall organization that ran the local Democratic Party and New York politics, had made a fortune selling real estate in New York based on those connections. He did not much care about baseball or the Giants—he enjoyed the power and prestige that he held by virtue of owning the team in the nation’s largest city—and he resented that he had to share his gate receipts with teams from lesser cities. He was extremely unpopular with his fellow owners, his players, his team’s fans, and the press. At one point when a league decision went against him, he reacted by deliberately letting his team deteriorate, figuring, with some justification, that the league needed a strong team in New York. “Base ball affairs in New York have been going just as I wished and expected them to go,” he said in 1898. “I have given the club little attention and I would not give five cents for the best base ball player in the world to strengthen it.”35

Brush and Freedman had reconciled a year or so before Johnson officially launched his Major League venture, with even more chaotic results. Brush proposed that the NL operate as a single trust company, dividing profits and losses (and players) according to market size. Freedman approved of the plan, which would allot him 30 percent of the league profits. Brush and Freedman recruited Soden of Boston and Robison of St. Louis, but the group could not find the fifth owner they needed to implement the scheme.

In particular, the plan seemed to target the upstart Dreyfuss, who had both the best players and the most profitable team. The league’s owners were split into two factions, and the dispute played out at the 1901 league meetings over the naming of a new league president. The protrust forces wanted to reelect the hapless Young, while the others supported the stronger Albert Spalding. With no one willing to break the impasse, a compromise put the league in the hands of a three-man commission led by Brush. The trust concept, at least, was dead.

As good as the 1901 Pirates were—a club hardly challenged over the last four months of the season—the dominance of the 1902 team was extraordinary. The Pirates began the season 30-5, and hardly slowed down until season’s end. They finished 103-36, twenty-seven and a half games ahead of the second-place Superbas—the largest margin ever in the years of the eight-team leagues. The club scored 5.5 runs per game, a run more than anyone else and 1.5 more than the league average. They allowed only 3.1 runs per game, by far the best mark in the league. Beaumont paced the NL with a .357 average, Leach led in triples and home runs, and Wagner in nearly everything else (runs, runs batted in [RBI], doubles, stolen bases, and slugging percentage, among others). The pitching was outstanding and deep. Chesbro finished 28-6, while the team’s fifth starter, Ed Doheny, was 16-4 with a 2.53 ERA.

One reason for the Pirates’ dominance was that they had been relatively unaffected by the American League’s continued raiding, a condition that changed dramatically during the 1902 season. In midsummer Dreyfuss learned that Ban Johnson and Charles Somers had come to Pittsburgh and, with the aid of backup catcher Jack O’Connor, met with several Pirates. Dreyfuss suspended O’Connor immediately, but eventually determined that some of his players, including Chesbro, Tannehill, Davis, and Leach, had received salary advances from the rival league. The players initially believed that they would be playing for a new American League team in Pittsburgh but soon discovered that the new AL team was to be located in New York.

When the regular season ended, Dreyfuss released Chesbro, Tannehill, and Davis prior to a lucrative postseason series the team had planned against an American League all-star squad. Chesbro tried to make amends and return to the fold, but Dreyfuss would have none of it. “Chesbro is gone, and I am glad of it,” Dreyfuss said of his twenty-eight-game winner. “I wish the American League luck with him, but no more of him in Pittsburgh.”36

Tommy Leach, on the other hand, returned the money and told Dreyfuss he wanted to stay. Dreyfuss took him back and considered the matter closed. Ban Johnson disagreed, which touched off the largest skirmish to date between the two leagues. “Johnson is too much of an artistic prevaricator for me,” said Dreyfuss. “I do not care about wrangling with him when he will not stick to the truth—does not, in fact, show any indication of ever hovering near same.”37

At this time the relationship between the leagues was at its nadir due to even more dramatic events in New York. Brush and Freedman, thwarted in their plans to form a league trust, instead devised a plan to undermine the American League by destroying the AL’s Baltimore Orioles franchise. First Brush convinced manager John McGraw, who was feuding with Johnson over the new league’s efforts to eliminate umpire abuse and rowdyism, to jump to the NL to manage the Freedman’s Giants, which McGraw did in the middle of the 1902 season. Meanwhile, Freedman maneuvered via friendly operatives to gain control of the Baltimore club. He soon released all the best Orioles, who then signed with either the Giants or Brush’s Reds. Ban Johnson retaliated by having the league take control of the Baltimore franchise and soon announced that a franchise would be given to New York in 1903 to directly compete with the Giants.

The next step in the drama might have been the most important, as it laid the groundwork for the eventual peace settlement. In September Freedman threw in the towel and sold the Giants to Brush, who sold the Reds to a group of wealthy businessmen. Minority stockholder Garry Herrmann was named Cincinnati’s team president and shortly emerged as one of baseball’s key executives. Brush and McGraw soon built the New York Giants into a great team, and both would be unfriendly rivals to Dreyfuss. But the removal of Freedman from the ownership ranks, and the addition of Herrmann, had an immediate calming effect on the rest of the league.

Barney Dreyfuss, sensing an opportunity, stepped out of the shadows. At the league meetings in 1902, he proposed Harry Pulliam as the next NL president. Dreyfuss had undoubtedly done the necessary lobbying before the meeting, and his friend and longtime employee was quickly confirmed. The NL soon agreed to peace talks with the AL; along with Herrmann, Dreyfuss played a central role in the negotiations for the National League. In just a few weeks the warring factions recognized the AL as a major league, divvied up all of the disputed players, and cemented an agreement to respect each other’s contracts. Of most importance to Dreyfuss: Tommy Leach would remain a Pirate, and the AL agreed to scrap any plans to put a team in Pittsburgh. Brush, for one, felt Dreyfuss had come out just a little too well and actually opposed the settlement until pressured by his fellow owners. “It’s all right for me to have to buck an American League club on Manhattan Island,” Brush complained, “so long as he is saved any opposition in Pittsburgh.”38 Nonetheless, peace was at hand.

Newly triumphant on and off the field, heading into the 1903 season Dreyfuss still had to replace an outfielder and two pitchers. Late in the 1902 season Dreyfuss acquired twenty-year-old Jimmy Sebring from Worcester, and the outfielder played 19 games in September, hitting .325 in 80 at bats. For 1903 Sebring replaced Davis in right. Replacing Tannehill and Chesbro was another matter. After using five great pitchers to start 134 of 141 games in 1902, Clarke needed twelve different starters in 1903. Brickyard Kennedy, acquired to be the fourth starter, managed only fifteen starts. Third starter Ed Doheny was in the midst of another excellent season in 1903 when a series of bizarre behavioral incidents sent him to a rest home for a few weeks in July and then ended his season in September. Unfortunately, he deteriorated further. In October he attacked both a doctor and a nurse and spent the rest of his life in mental asylums.

Due mainly to their pitching concerns, the Pirates regressed by 12.5 games from 1902, but they still finished 91-49 and won the pennant by 6.5 games. Their league-leading offense carried them, especially Wagner (.355, 30 doubles, 19 triples), Clarke (.351, 32 doubles, 15 triples), Beaumont (.341, 209 hits, 137 runs), and Leach (.298, 17 triples). The two remaining star pitchers—Leever and Phillippe—each won 25 games, with Leever posting a league-leading 2.06 ERA. In June, when Doheny was still healthy, the Pirates threw a record six consecutive shutouts, with Leever and Phillippe contributing two each.

Late in the 1903 season, Dreyfuss met with Henry J. Killilea, owner of the AL champion Boston Americans, and agreed to a postseason series between the two teams. Although the leagues had made peace in January, it was the playing of this first (AL versus NL) World Series that cemented the partnership. Unfortunately for Dreyfuss, the Pirates were not at full strength when the best-of-nine World Series commenced. Already down to just two pitchers in September, late that month Sam Leever hurt his arm skeet shooting and could manage just ten painful innings in the Series. Deacon Phillippe, the team’s sole remaining healthy and effective pitcher, remarkably started (and completed) five of the eight games, winning three times. It was not enough, as he went down to defeat in both Game Seven and Game Eight, and the Pirates fell five games to three.

Far from despondent, Dreyfuss donated his entire share of the Series gate receipts to his team, meaning that the Pirates players ended up making more money from the World Series than the victorious Americans. Moreover, the postseason Series was not steeped with the same significance as it would be with later generations of baseball fans. The Pirates were three-time NL pennant winners and widely hailed as one of the greatest teams ever assembled.

Just five years after Dreyfuss was nearly forced out of baseball, he stood at the very top of his sport. He had astutely foreseen extermination of his Louisville franchise and outfoxed his fellow magnates to end up with a better team in a larger city. By successfully anticipating and countering the impact of the American League’s challenge, proving more adept than any of his fellow NL magnates, Dreyfuss warded off the most serious attempted inroads from the new league, leaving his Pirates the dominant NL franchise. Although his fellow owners may have resented his success for a time, thanks as much to Dreyfuss as anyone, the NL was immeasurably stronger and healthier in 1903 than at any time in its past.

Over the next three decades Dreyfuss ran the Pirates smartly and effectively, competitive nearly every season. Although well respected for his intelligence and diligence, he was not always an easy boss. “At times he could be severe, dominating, critical and stubborn,” wrote Fred Lieb. “Many ball players felt he was a hard man to get along with. Yet he befriended many of the men who worked for him.”39 Many of his former players became his managers and coaches.

To remain competitive Dreyfuss continued to track baseball talent throughout the country and to know in detail the workings of his own team and most others. He coordinated this knowledge with his manager—Clarke through 1915 and others thereafter—in acquiring players to fill needs on the team. He picked up catcher George Gibson from Montreal in 1905, pitcher Vic Willis from the Boston Beaneaters in 1905, and pitcher Babe Adams from Denver in 1907. When Adams told Dreyfuss about Owen “Chief” Wilson, a Des Moines outfielder who had given Adams fits, Dreyfuss promptly bought him. Those players helped the Pirates capture the 1909 pennant and their first World Series.

Dreyfuss remained, first and foremost, a businessman. As Gibson later related, during negotiations after the 1909 World Series, Dreyfuss told him to fill in whatever salary figure he felt was fair. Gibson told Dreyfuss he wanted $12,000, one of baseball’s highest salaries, and the right to be released as a free agent when Dreyfuss no longer wanted him, not placed on waivers to be claimed by any team for the $1,800 waiver price. “Gibby, I’ll write it in the contract,” Dreyfuss agreed. “No,” Gibson demurred. “You’ve always been a man of your word with me.” And Dreyfuss promised to release him when the time came.

Seven years later Dreyfuss placed Gibson on waivers, and the New York Giants claimed him. Gibson complained to Dreyfuss and Giants manager John McGraw, and the latter agreed to pay Gibson an additional $1,800 to get him to report. In 1919 when Dreyfuss asked Gibson to manage the Pirates, the player reminded his former owner of his broken promise. Dreyfuss grumbled and offered Gibson the $1,800 he received from the Giants as a peace offering. Gibson accepted both the manager’s job and the money, which he had “already gotten . . . from John McGraw. But Barney Dreyfuss didn’t know that.”40

Dreyfuss made another lasting contribution to Pittsburgh and to baseball in 1909 with the opening of Forbes Field, the Pirates’ spectacular new ballpark. Rather than erecting another rickety wooden structure, Dreyfuss built a three-tiered ballpark out of steel and concrete, much like Philadelphia’s Shibe Park, which opened the same year. Spending roughly $1 million, Dreyfuss built the stadium on seven acres he had purchased in the Oakland neighborhood, a ten-minute trolley ride from downtown. Ignoring skeptics who thought Forbes Field too remote, too big (it originally seated twenty-three thousand fans), and too expensive, Dreyfuss forged ahead and in June 1909 opened a park that many considered the finest in the land.

With the increased revenues from Forbes Field and his generally well-run team, Dreyfuss continued to spend money on increasingly expensive talent that he or one of his contacts thought could help his club. In July 1911 Dreyfuss shocked the baseball establishment by purchasing hurler Marty O’Toole from St. Paul, a club in the American Association, for $22,500. This almost doubled baseball’s previous high-dollar purchases: Rube Marquard by the Giants in 1908 for $11,000 and Lefty Russell by the Athletics in 1910 for $12,000.41

Unfortunately, O’Toole never panned out; Dreyfuss later believed he had been sold damaged goods, that O’Toole had been overworked. To Dreyfuss’s credit, he understood that scouting and bringing in new players was an inexact science, and he continued his search for players. He bought Max Carey from South Bend in 1910, Wilbur Cooper from Columbus in 1912, Carson Bigbee from Tacoma in 1916, Pie Traynor from Portsmouth in 1920, Kiki Cuyler from Bay City (Mississippi) in 1921, and Glenn Wright from Kansas City in 1923.

In 1912 Dreyfuss purchased the contract of George Sisler from Columbus. Typically, he first scouted Sisler himself after receiving a recommendation from one of his friendly contacts. Unfortunately for the Pirates, Dreyfuss lost a bitter fight for Sisler’s rights when the National Commission, baseball’s governing body, awarded him to the St. Louis Browns, ruling that Sisler’s father had not signed off on the youth’s Pittsburgh contract.42

By the 1920s most of the Pirates’ talent hunting was done by hired scouts, but Dreyfuss still kept his dope book, still knew who all the best Minor League players were and what the major newspapers had to say about them. In 1923 Dreyfuss hired Joe Devine to scout California, and within a few years Devine had landed Joe Cronin, Paul Waner, Lloyd Waner, and Arky Vaughan. All four of those players ended up in the Hall of Fame, as did Wagner, Clarke, Carey, Cuyler, and Traynor. The Pirates won two more pennants in the 1920s, including the 1925 World Series.

In 1919 Dreyfuss’s only son, Sam, graduated from Princeton and began working for the Pirates. Sam started on the business side, becoming treasurer in 1923, and by 1929 he was vice president (VP) and had become, like his father, one of the most respected and well-informed executives in the game.43 In 1930 the elder Dreyfuss stepped aside to let his son run the team. Sam’s sudden death from pneumonia in early 1931, at age thirty-four, was a crushing blow to Barney both personally and professionally. A year into semiretirement, Barney again took over the Pirates before his own death less than a year later in February 1932.

“I cannot tell you how deeply I feel the loss of Barney Dreyfuss,” said NL president John A. Heydler. “He discovered more great players than any man in the game, and his advice and counsel always were sought by his associates.” Jacob Ruppert, the owner of the New York Yankees, spoke for many of his colleagues when he said, “He was first and always a sportsman of the highest class.”44 Lieb summed up Dreyfuss’s legacy: “He was one of the game’s greatest and most far-seeing club owners.”45

Dreyfuss operated the Pittsburgh Pirates for thirty-two seasons, winning six pennants and finishing in the first division twenty-six times. The Pirates ownership passed to his widow, Florence, and the club was run by son-in-law William Benswanger for the next fourteen years. In the eight decades since Dreyfuss’s death, the Pirates have provided occasional joy to their fan base, but have won only three pennants.

Dreyfuss succeeded in this era because his unique attention to detail combined with his competitive fire, a knack for negotiating the charged politics of his league, and his ability to engender loyalty from his players created an organization one step ahead of most of the competition. At a time when the man in charge needed to be a jack-of-all-trades, Dreyfuss effectively understood both the detail and the general to assemble one of the great franchises of the early twentieth century.

But a century ago a man in charge like Dreyfuss did not need to be a representative of ownership. A strong, secure manager could also build and run a consistently successful organization, as we will see with John McGraw.