Moe Berg and Clifford Van Beek
Examining the 1930 White Sox
Moe Berg and Clifford Van Beek
There’s no shortage of stories out there about Moe Berg. Most of you already know about his linguistic talents and his time with the OSS after his playing days were through.
If you ask me, though, the strangest thing about Moe Berg is the fact that Clifford Van Beek decided to issue him a National Pastime card.
Moe Berg in 1930
Carding Berg’s 1930 season makes no sense because he scarcely played.
After an excellent 1929, in which Berg put up a .287 / .323 / .307 line in 102 games, Berg scarcely saw any action in 1930.
And, as you can guess, the problem was injuries. Berg’s excellent biography on the SABR website doesn’t mention much about his 1930 season, so we’ll have to do some of this research ourselves.
Berg started out the season injured:
And, well, he sort of stayed that way. Here’s another article from almost an entire month later:
Now, we know from Berg’s game logs that he did show up in late May, playing occasionally throughout that summer. He even played well from time to time:
Precisely what happened to Berg for the rest of the 1930 season is a mystery to me. None of the Chicago papers I have access to seem to mention him beyond his occasional appearances. I haven’t found any additional notes about injuries or other issues. It seems that his knees kept bothering him — which, presumably, is why he only appeared in 10 games for the Indians in 1931, after being picked up on waivers.
Why Berg Should Not Have Received A Card
That’s all well and good for trivia. What does it have to do with National Pastime?
Well, giving Berg a card just so happens to screw up a lot of the calculations.
Remember what I wrote a few weeks ago about Van Beek's American League roster and lineup decisions? I told you then that we’d talk later about the White Sox, that something strange was going on.
It’s time to dig in.
Here’s what the White Sox National Pastime lineup looks like:
And, in contrast, here are the 1930 White Sox players, arranged by at bats:
As you can see, it wouldn’t make much of a difference if we arranged by plate appearances (which nobody calculated in 1930) or games played. It looks more or less like this, no matter how you slice it.
Now, for the sake of comparison, here’s a very simple spreadsheet I rigged up, which will show us all the carded White Sox players in order of 1930 at bats:
A simple glance at this shows us a few problems:
The White Sox have 3 catchers (most National Pastime teams have only 2).
Crouse and Berg had fewer at bats than one of the pitchers.
Berg had fewer at bats than two pitchers.
Now, when we compare this to the Baseball Reference picture above, we see that there are a few position players missing from the National Pastime White Sox:
Art Shires
Irv Jeffries
Blondy Ryan
Dave Harris
Bill Hunnefield
Alex Metzler
Ernie Smith
Martin Autry
Every single one of these players had more than 61 at bats for the White Sox in 1930. None of them received a card.
Let’s dig in.
The Missing Players
It’s easy to forgive Van Beek for giving Crouse a card, since he needed a backup catcher for Tate.
Art Shires, who normally would have been an obvious choice to card, ended the season with the Senators. True to form, Van Beek did issue Shires a card: on the Senators.
Irv Jeffries hit .235 as a rookie in 1930, playing from late April through late July. He had just short of 80 games in 1931, double his 1930 total, before going back down to the minors. Had he been carded, Jeffries would have been an infielder on the bench.
Blondy Ryan was a 28-year-old rookie in 1930, hitting .207 as a utility infielder. He played throughout the month of July, and came back into the lineup in September. If Van Beek based his game solely on what he observed in September 1930, Ryan would have obviously received a card. He did not, and went back down to the minors in 1931.
Outfielder Dave Harris ended the season with the Senators, and, again, received a card for Washington.
Utility infielder Bill Hunnefield played from April to early June and hit .272. It seems that he went back down to Toledo, though I don’t quite understand why. Hunnefield was back in the major leagues in 1931, though he came up with Cleveland, went to the Braves, and ended his major league career with the Giants in that season.
Alex Metzler, an outfielder, was traded to the Browns, where Van Beek carded him as the starting right fielder.
Shortstop Ernie Smith played his only major league season for the White Sox in 1930, hitting .241 in a stretch of 5 or 6 weeks in April and May. He wound up going back to Minnesota, where he consistently hit over .300.
That leaves us with Martin Autry. Autry was 27 years old and in what would be his final major league season. The wild part, of course, is that Autry was a catcher, just like Berg.
In other words, Clifford Van Beek not only skipped a number of infielders that he clearly could have carded in Berg’s place, but also skipped another catcher.
All in all, of the 8 players I listed above, 3 ended the season with other teams. Why choose Berg over the other 5?
Fanboy
Some have speculated that Van Beek was a fan of Chicago teams. The traditional story is that Rogers Hornsby received a card based on his excellent 1929 season and not on his partial 1930 season.
I suppose that could be the case for Berg. Perhaps Van Beek was a fan of Moe’s. Maybe there was some sort of connection between the two men, though I honestly doubt it.
The problem, though, is that Berg just wasn’t a good hitter in 1930. He hit .115 in his 61 at bats. He hit worse than every single player I just listed.
It is possible that Berg’s card is actually based on his 1929 performance, or maybe even a combination of performances over the span of several seasons. I can’t say one way or another right now, since I haven’t even begun the task of deconstructing the cards themselves.
However, if Van Beek were really carding these teams as a Chicago fan, why give a card to an obscure backup catcher? Since the game is based only around batting mechanics, why not create a card for Ernie Smith, but base it off of his minor league statistics (which were also in the baseball guide Van Beek allegedly used)? Why not card Hunnefield, who hit every bit as well for the White Sox as Berg did in 1929?
Defensive Lineups
Now, the interesting thing is that carding Berg doesn’t really impact the White Sox’ defensive lineups. It’s pretty clear, though, that Van Beek made a few errors
Here’s what the White Sox defensive lineup looked like in 1930, based on the number of games started at each position:
Let’s get the stuff Van Beek got right out of the way first. Van Beek has Tate at catcher, Kamm at third base, and Jolley at left field.
That’s it.
Reynolds starting in right field makes sense, because Jolley can’t start in both right and left. You could have Jolley start in right field and Reynolds in left if you wanted to; you’d still have the same problem.
The rest kind of needs some work.
Watwood should be the starting first baseman, and should not be in center field. Barnes is on the bench instead of starting in center field, which seems like a really odd mistake if Van Beek is taking notes on individual game boxscores.
Cissell should be the starting second baseman, not the starting shortstop. Mulleavy, who is carded and is on the bench, should be in that starting shortstop role.
In other words, a corrected National Pastime Chicago White Sox defensive lineup should look like this:
Tate: C
Watwood: 1B
Cissell: 2B
Kamm: 3B
Mulleavy: SS
Jolley: LF
Barnes: CF
Reynolds: RF
On the same lines, a corrected batting order could look like this:
Watwood 1B
Mulleavy SS
Reynolds RF
Jolley LF
Barnes CF
Cissell 2B
Kamm 3B
Tate C
Pitcher
No additional cards would be needed to fix those mistakes. And, as you can see, this setup compares well to the actual batting orders that the White Sox used in 1930:
I’m not certain that this particular lineup ever featured in a game, but it’s probably as close as you’re going to get for a bad team that featured a lot of managerial fiddling and diddling as the season went on.
Note that all of this is possible despite the fact that Moe Berg received a card.
In the end, I’m still convinced that Van Beek was tracking the boxscores closely. The fact that the Chicago White Sox are the only team with this level of lineup and batting order mistakes tells me that Van Beek likely knew more than we give him credit for.
But I’ll never understand why he decided to card Moe Berg.