Donlin and McGraw

Correcting the record

Donlin and McGraw

There’s a story behind this post, as usual.

I saw somebody on Twitter the other day mention Mike Donlin — in particular, the fact that Donlin left baseball for show business.

We’ll talk about Donlin’s stage activities in the future. For now, though, I want to focus in on this particular section of Donlin’s SABR biography:

You can probably guess why I care about this. As I mentioned earlier, everybody seems to forget about John McGraw’s 1900 season with St. Louis — which is where Mike Donlin was playing at the time.

But let’s back things up just a tad.

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California

Donlin’s professional baseball career started sometime around 1899 in California. Interestingly enough, we can find mentions of him in the California press going back at least to the beginning of the 1899 season.

Now, one of the fun things about these old newspapers is that you can learn all sorts of random bits of trivia about a person. For example, I now know what day Donlin arrived in Santa Cruz, and where he was staying:

From Santa Cruz Daily Sentinel, March 14, 1899, page 3

The next day there was a small note indicating that Donlin was close to being bought out by a Western League side:

From Santa Cruz Evening Sentinel, March 15, 1899, page 3

That would have been quite interesting. Donlin would have likely been with Detroit in the American League in 1900, and possibly 1901, had he accepted that offer.

Anyway, Donlin started out playing primarily as a pitcher, as you can see here:

From The Record-Union (Sacramento), June 16, 1899, page 5

Donlin apparently would split time between right field and pitching duties, which reminds me of at least two other famous star players:

From The Record-Union (Sacramento), June 18, 1899, page 3

And it didn’t take long for the big clubs to recognize his talent.

From Santa Cruz Evening Sentinel, June 22, 1899, page 3

From St. Louis Daily Globe-Democrat, June 22, 1899, page 11

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The Legend

Donlin was apparently a pretty good pitcher, by all accounts:

From St. Louis Daily Globe-Democrat, July 20, 1899, page 11

He didn’t do quite so well as a pitcher in all of his games, though. Donlin wound up only appearing in 3 games as a pitcher for St. Louis, giving up 13 earned runs on 15 hits with 14 walks and only 6 strikeouts.

Fortunately, though, he had other talents.

Now, the “legendary” part of all of this is the story that arose about how Donlin was discovered. The St. Louis press credited The Sporting News, of all publications, for inspiring Patsy Tebeau to have him checked out:

From St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 29, 1899, page 5

Donlin seemed to be an excellent fielder, but was an even better hitter, finishing the year with a .323 / .366 / .470 line.

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1900

And that’s where we come to the 1900 season.

Now, we need to get something out of the way. Donlin wasn’t exactly a pushover. He was the kind of player that McGraw loved — scrappy and competitive, not afraid to speak, and as talented as anybody.

The two of them led St. Louis in batting in early June:

From The Republic (St. Louis, Missouri), June 4, 1900, page 4

However, that scrapiness also got Donlin into trouble. Here’s a little anecdote that you won’t find in his SABR biography:

From St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 25, 1900, page 5

I particularly liked the description of how Donlin, “who was feeling gay,” “took exception” to how some random old guy looked, and wound up getting cut up with a knife as a result.

As you can guess, some of the papers had more detailed accounts of the incident:

From St. Louis Daily Globe-Democrat, June 25, 1900, page 9

This one was the best account I could find:

From The Republic (St. Louis, Missouri), June 25, 1900, page 5

In keeping with the spirit of the times, of course, Donlin didn’t miss even a week:

From St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 30, 1900, page 5

I know that ballplayers were pretty tough in those days, but this is kind of absurd. Who goes back out to play ball 5 days after being stabbed?

Incidentally, Donlin didn’t seem to suffer much from that bar brawl. In fact, this was almost certainly his best performance of the season, less than a month and a half after that fight:

From The Republic (St. Louis, Missouri), August 6, 1900, page 10

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McGraw the Leader

So why talk about all of this?

Well, when John McGraw went to manage Baltimore in the 1901 American League, he took Donlin with him.

Now, I think it’s pretty clear by now that Mike Donlin wasn’t the sort of man to take orders from anybody. The remarkable part, though, is that he was willing to go along with McGraw to the American League, even though he had refused a similar opportunity a year and a half earlier.

I don’t think this was about the money, either. Yes, Donlin wound up in Cincinnati in 1902, instead of staying with the Orioles (and his missing bat is almost certainly one reason why the 1902 Orioles were such a poor team). However, we find Donlin back with McGraw in 1904, almost like he was pulled over to New York with a magnet.

There was something about McGraw that inspired men to follow him — something charismatic. It’s hard to judge this from old newspapers and heavily sanitized biographies, of course. However, the truth is that Donlin wasn’t the only player from this age who always seemed to be teamed up with McGraw.