Irvin Wilhelm's 1908 Contract Dispute
Digging deep
Irvin Wilhelm’s 1908 Contract Dispute
Life wasn’t exactly easy for Charles Ebbets in the pre-World War I days.
We’ve already seen how Ebbets had a very hard time convincing speedster Harry Pattee to leave the minor leagues and start playing in Brooklyn.
We also saw how hotly anticipated young pitcher Pembroke Finlayson turned into a headache due to complications arising from how he was purchased.
That article mentioned another young minor league star pitcher — Irvin Wilhelm. We’ll take a close look at his controversy today.
Phenom
Wilhelm’s 1907 season ended with a bang. While pitching in Birmingham, Wilhelm had an impressive streak of consecutive scoreless innings. From Wilhelm’s SABR biography:
However, it was before this streak that Wilhelm was drafted. This is the earliest note I could find about Wilhelm in the Brooklyn newspapers:
Note the date: September 3, 1907, which is a lot earlier than even the SABR biography indicates.
I don’t know much about how the draft worked in those days — this might be a topic for a future post. At any rate, Wilhelm was drafted by Ebbets, who was desperate for quality pitching.
Wilhelm appeared on Brooklyn’s reserve list a few weeks later:
Note also that Harry Pattee’s name appears on this list, though his first name was misspelled.
The Brooklyn papers did report Wilhelm’s shutout accomplishment the very next day:
The local papers also reported Wilhelm’s lack of success earlier with the Boston Doves — though it failed to mention that he had also played for Pittsburgh in 1903:
Of course, Wilhelm had more than just a tryout with Boston. He went 5-3 for the Pirates in 1903 in 86 innings, put up a 14-20 record for Boston in 1904 in 288 innings, and went a whopping 3-23 for Boston in 1905 in 242 1/3.
Wilhelm turned 31 in early 1908, which means he wasn’t exactly some exciting young rookie ready for his first chance. I’m not sure if Ebbets was aware of this or not — but, if the Brooklyn sportswriters knew he had already been tried and found wanting, they sure didn’t mention it.
Contract Dispute
Wilhelm had been around the block before. He wasn’t about to let himself be bought and sold without getting at least some of the action. Per his SABR bio:
That surviving personal correspondance is helpful, because the newspaper accounts don’t explain why he signed in the end.
Trouble was brewing as early as the beginning of February 1908:
Note that Wilhelm was described as a “star spit ball pitcher.” Irving presumably didn’t have a spitball when he played for Boston. My guess is that every pitcher who knew what side his bread was buttered on learned how to throw a spitter back in 1908 — much like how the split fingered fastball grew in popularity after the 1986 season.
Here’s Wilhelm’s appeal to the National Commission:
And here’s a fragmentary scrap that mentions the pigeonholing that his SABR bio described:
Notice that Wilhelm wasn’t the only player Brooklyn was trying to get by skirting the rules. It kind of makes you wonder if all the other teams weren’t doing the same thing.
And here’s a bit more:
With that out of the way, Wilhelm only had to actually sign with the club. Things were still up in the air when spring training started:
Wilhelm was still MIA as late as March 14:
But then, on March 17th, everything was set right:
So was he worth it?
Well, it was certainly better than having the bat boy pitch. However, with a 16-22 record in his 332 innings, Wilhelm didn’t exactly wow people. He did manage a 1.87 ERA, which is impressive — but translated only to a 126 ERA+ in the pitcher-friendly world of the 1908 National Lague.
Wilhelm was 3-13 in 1909 as his ERA ballooned up. He was back in the minors by late 1910, coming up for air briefly to play with Baltimore in the Federal League in 1914. At 37 years old, Wilhelm was past his prime, managing a 12-17 record with a 4.03 ERA.
In my opinion, he really wasn’t worth the trouble.