Bill Bernhard Jumps To The American League

But was he worth it?

Bill Bernhard Jumps To The American League

Okay — let’s say you’re playing OOTP. You’re looking at potentially signing a kid away from your fiercest rival. You take a look at his most recent major league statistics, and you see this:

Do you sign him?

I’ll give you some more information. During the first year, the pitcher’s rookie year, he was 28 years old. That means he was 29 during his illustrious 76 ERA+ season, in which he led the league with 11 wild pitches.

Do you think it’s worth signing him?

Connie Mack certainly did.

This player is Bill Bernhard. 1899 was his rookie year, in which he spent most of his time in the minors. During the second year, 1900, Bernhard started off strong, but finished weak. Per his SABR biography:

I love the little biographical note at the end of the paragraph — as if you weren’t just bombarded with more facts than the average human can handle.

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The Signing

Now, if you don’t know anything about Bill Bernhard going to the Athletics in 1901, I can’t blame you. Even Norman Macht’s great biography of Connie Mack barely mentions him:

From page 212

The truth is that Macht understated things a tad. Yes, the attention was on Napoleon Lajoie — but Bernhard going to the American League was kind of a big deal.

The coup appears to have taken place on March 22nd, judging from this bit in The Philadelphia Inquirer the next day:

From The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 23, 1901, page 7

Note how late it was in the spring: March 23. That barely gave Mack enough time to get Bernhard and his other signings warmed up before the season began.

Here’s another report from a rival newspaper:

From The Philadelphia Times, March 23, 1901, page 10

I think “star young twirler” is kind of a stretch, but what matters is how they described it at the time.

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The Aftermath

The fun began before the season even began.

From The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 28, 1901, page 7

Of course, it took decades before the injustice noted in this article was finally righted. So much for the power of the press.

The lawsuit was a real thing, of course:

From The Philadelphia Times, March 29, 1901, page 10

If you can’t tell, The Philadelphia Times was a pro-National League newspaper.

That lawsuit, of course, is too much for us to handle today. I think Bernhard’s SABR biography sums it up nicely:

Bernhard, by the way, played with Cleveland until the end of the 1907 season, when he wound up back in the minor leagues, playing and managing in Nashville.