Baseball’s Greatest Outfield
Read about baseball’s greatest-ever outfield
They were born a hundred years too soon.
They wrote the record books when it was still too early to rewrite them. Today they would be the $100 million outfield. - Norman L. Macht
Sure, they played when the rules and equipment were changing. Maybe you cannot meaningfully compare the records of modern .240, 20-home-run stars with .400 hitters of the 19th century.
But the object of the game has always been the same: hit the ball, score runs, catch the ball hit by the other team. And this fact remains indisputable: no outfield has ever done those things more powerfully, efficiently and spectacularly than the 1892-1895 Phillies’ Ed Delahanty, Sam Thompson and Billy Hamilton.
Comparative stats suffered a slight skewing in 1893, when the pitching distance was moved back from 50 feet to the present 60.5 feet.
League batting averages soared from a collective .245 to .309 in two years, before the pitchers adjusted. Those numbers would not be matched until 1930.
But there is a standard that can be validly applied – stacking players against their contemporaries. And what stands out here is that the Phillies outfield outhit and outfielded its rival National League garden patrols by wider margins than any future set ever did.
During the years 1892-1895 one of the three led the league in batting, home runs, runs, RBIs, stolen bases, hits, doubles, triples, walks, slugging or total bases. For three years their combined batting average topped the league composite by 92 to 97 points.
The closest any other outfield has come to such dominance is the Detroit Tigers’ trio of Ty Cobb, Bobby Veach and Harry Heilmann, who outhit the American League BA by 84 points in 1919.
In Baker Bowl the 1929-1930 Phillies trio of Chuck Klein, Lefty O’Doul and Denny Sothern hit .353 and .350, but the NL batting average was .295 and .303 in those years.
Those old-time Phillies were a phenomenal run-producing machine. Forget the 1927 Yankees – Babe Ruth, Earle Combs, Bob Meusel and their number one sub, Cedric Durst, batted .350. They scored only 388 runs and drove in 356.
The 1894 Phillies foursome, including sub Tuck Turner, scored 551 and racked up 441 RBIs. They almost matched those totals in ’95.
We’re talking about a time when the home run was scorned as a selfish display of brute strength, contributing little to a team’s scoring efforts. The stolen base and sacrifice were applauded more than the long ball.
Commented the 1895 Spalding Guide: “Any soft-brained heavyweight can occasionally hit a ball for a home run, but it requires a shrewd, intelligent player with his wits about him to make a successful baserunner.”
Yet, on May 7, 1894, Sam Thompson, in his tenth year in the National League, bunted for only the second time.
The Phillies put together this Hall of Fame picket line because two major league teams, one entire league, and a 25-year-old second baseman all died.
Sam Thompson, a carpenter in Danville, Indiana, had acquired a local reputation by hitting a home run every time he came up to bat.
He was lured down from a roofing job when Detroit offered to equal the $2.50 a day he was earning patching roofs.
When the Wolverines dropped out of the National League after the 1888 season and sold off their players, the Phillies paid $5,000 for Thompson.
At the age of 21, Billy Hamilton stole 117 bases and batted .301 for Kansas City in the then-major league American Association. The KC club then folded, and the Phillies shelled out another five grand for Hamilton.
Ed Delahanty, the oldest of five brothers who played in the big leagues over a 25-year span, broke in as a catcher with Mansfield in the Ohio State League, and batted .355 in 1887.
He moved up to Wheeling as a second baseman and was hitting .400 when the Phillies’ Charlie Ferguson, a pitcher who also played second base, died of typhoid fever in April 1888. To replace him, the Phillies bought Delahanty for $1,900.
An injury sidelined him for three months in 1889. When he got back into action, second base was covered by Al Myers, acquired from Washington, so Ed went to the outfield.
Thompson and Delahanty jumped to the Players’ League in 1890, then both jumped back to the Phillies. Lured by a chance to play in his home town, Cleveland, Ed did a triple flip and rebounded to the Players’ League. He played shortstop and batted .298, but he was not happy there.
“Playing in your home town is a mistake,” he admitted.
When the league folded after one season, rights to the jumpers reverted to their former teams.
The Phils had picked up Billy Sunday to fill in, but he departed in 1891 to catch wayward souls instead of fly balls. Delahanty moved to center field.
Hamilton was in left and Thompson in right. In 1893 Hamilton and Delahanty switched places.
Hamilton was a flashy, electrifying player. Thompson was a quiet, well-behaved gentleman. Neither was in the mold of the typical brawling, carousing, hard-drinking, gambling umpire-baiters who inhabited baseball in the Gay Nineties.
Big Ed Delahanty was a different piece of work. A temperamental mix of French and Irish ancestry, he was the Babe Ruth of his time.
He lived high, loved his “Irish turkey” (corned beef and cabbage) and beer, spent whatever he earned (which was never over $4,000), and attracted a trail of hero-worshippers of all ages and both sexes wherever he went.
Delahanty also performed Ruthian feats at the plate. You cannot count the greatest right-hand batters on one hand without including him.
He hit the ball harder than anyone had ever seen a ball damaged. His line drives could carry an infielder’s limbs into the outfield.
He hit to all fields with equal ease and power, using a different swing for different pitches. He was something of a guess hitter and a notorious bad ball hitter.
Wielding a long, heavy bat, he would reach out as far as he could and blast the ball against the fences.
“The most dangerous thing to pitch that bat-mad galoot,” wailed Cleveland manager Pat Tebeau, “is a wild pitch. If you let him get a step into the ball, he’ll knock the cover off.”
Once he actually batted a ball into two pieces, forcing the home team to put a rare second ball into play.
He went 6-for-6 twice, made 10 straight hits, hit four doubles in one game and 56 for a season, and hit four home runs and a single in one nine-inning game at Chicago.
After he had hit the third one, Chicago center fielder Bill Lange mounted the steps to the center field clubhouses and challenged Ed to hit one over him. Del slammed the first pitch onto the roof of one clubhouse; it bounced onto the other roof and back onto the field.
The Chicago correspondent for Sporting Life described the scene:
“With two out, this mighty slugger came up again in the ninth, and the departing multitude tarried to see him slug. Whang! The ball lit far out in the space by the dressing rooms, and Del trotted around, while the thunderous plaudits of the people rained down from stand and bleachers, and four boxes of chewing gum were carried to the hero as reward.”
(Rewards, as well as rules, sure have changed.)
Delahanty hit .400 or better twice and .399 and .397. He won batting titles in both the National and American Leagues. His career .345 is the fourth highest in the books.
Sam Thompson is the greatest run producer in history. The 6-foot-2 lefty swinger drove in .923 runs per game, narrowly edging Lou Gehrig.
He is eighth in runs scored per game, a productivity rating topped by Billy Hamilton, who scored 1.06 runs per game over 14 years.
Thompson’s 1.42 and 1.39 RBIs per game in 1894 and 1895 are the two best single season records. Delahanty topped the league with 1.11 per game in 1893.
And why not? They often batted 1-2-3 with Hamilton leading off, throwing pitchers into sudden attacks of reluctance to turn the ball loose at the cry of play ball.
Standing slouched at the plate like an ungainly rookie, Thompson was even more of a slugger than Delahanty. In 1895 he led the league with 18 home runs and 165 RBIs in 118 games while batting .392.
But he was ignored by the Spalding Guide because he was one of the “rutty class of slugging batsmen, who think of nothing else when they go to the bat but of gaining applause of the ‘groundlings’ by the novice’s hit to the outfield for a homer, one of the least difficult hits known to batting in baseball, as it needs only muscle and not brains to make it.”
Thompson, a quiet, modest fellow who never kicked at an umpire’s call, was the first to earn the nickname “Old Reliable.” After the 1894 season he assumed the role of team spokesman, criticizing club owners for skimping on travel and hotel arrangements.
“The Phils do not travel in parlor cars nor stay at $10-a-day hotels,” he complained, and vowed not to wear a Phillies uniform again. Accommodations improved the next year.
Thompson won an 1895 scorecard popularity contest by a wide margin, which earned him a $150 silver cup, and frequently received bouquet of flowers at home plate before a game.
Billy Hamilton was the Ty Cobb, Jackie Robinson and Rickey Henderson of his time. A left-handed poke hitter with no power, he was a terror on the base paths.
Rules on stolen bases were different from today, but the bases were still 90 feet apart, and for half his career the pitching distance was only 50 feet.
A 10-second dash man in high school and an expert roller skater, the little Scotsman once stole at least one base in 13 straight games in 1891, when today’s scoring rules were in effect.
On August 31, 1894, he stole seven bases in one game. He stole 937 bases to Cobb’s 892 in half as many games.
But you will not find his name among the all-time leaders. In 1937 he signed himself “Sliding Billy Hamilton” in a letter to The Sporting News protesting his omission rom the official records:
“I’ll have you know, sir,” he wrote, “that I was and will be the greatest stealer of all times. I did stole [sic] over 100 bases on many years and if they ever recount the record I will get my just reward.”
Hamilton took audacious leads even against 50-foot pitches. In his first few games he was picked off first base three times and the Kansas City manager stifled his larcenous tendencies.
But in 1889 Watty Watkins took over and turned Billy loose. He swiped 117, the “unofficial” record for 85 years.
In 1894 Hamilton scored 196 runs, still unequalled. He batted .344 lifetime and led the league in walks five times, so he was often on base to tantalize pitchers and keep the crowd whooping it up for him to run.
Comparing Hamilton to Cobb when Ty was tearing up the American League, Sam Thompson said, “They were unlike in method and style and system. Hamilton was the more daring and reckless of the two, but he didn’t have the headwork and inside stuff that Ty pulled off . . . Hamilton’s work on the baselines was spectacular; he took special delight in stealing bases.”
Perhaps the strongest point in the Phillies’ claim to baseball’s greatest outfield is the fourth man: George “Tuck” Turner. In August 1893, Hamilton was sick and the Phillies scratched around for a replacement.
They found 20-year-old Turner with a semipro team on Staten Island and signed him. In 36 games he batted .323.
In 1894 Thompson was hampered by an injury to his left hand called “dead bone.” Battered by hard-hit line drives (fielders’ gloves were about the size of today’s batting gloves), his little finger swelled painfully. Rather than amputating it, the medics took out the small bones, and Thompson was out for one month.
In 80 games Turner scored 91 runs and drove in 82. He batted .416 with 21 doubles and nine triples. A switch-hitter, he often batted fourth in manager Arthur Irwin’s lineup.
On the morning of July 4 in Chicago, Turner pitched six innings in relief, gave up five runs, and never pitched again. He hit .386 in 59 games in 1895 and was no liability in the field.
There have always been hard-hitting outfielders whose adventures with the glove prompted as many jokes as putouts – Babe Herman, Smead Jolley, Buzz Arlett, Lou Novikoff to name a few. But the Phillies’ foursome of the 1890s was equally acclaimed for its fielding exploits.
Accounts of the time often refer to game-saving dashes to snare line drives and races to the farthest corners of the outfield. The home ballpark had a 15-foot banked bicycle racing track around the outfield, making it even trickier to play.
Hamilton and Delahanty were even faster than Thompson, whose long legs covered plenty of acreage. All had strong, accurate arms.
In center field between two six-footers, Hamilton was like a gazelle flanked by a pair of giraffes.
He was built like Hack Wilson – 5’6 and stocky, but at 165 he was 25 pounds under Wilson’s best playing weight. Billy took a chance on catching everything that stayed in the park, often getting a near-miss glove on drives that other fielders would not attempt to catch.
He stood facing the left fielder, his hands behind him and head turned watching the batter over his left shoulder.
At the crack of the bat, he took off and pulled down long drives at impossible angles and positions, often doubling off unbelieving base runners. Sprawling snatches of line drives were routine.
Sam Thompson is credited with perfecting the one-bounce throw from right field to home plate. In 1894 he went 50 games without muffing a fly ball, a feat in those days of palm-sized gloves. He made seven errors in 1896, when the average game saw five or six misplays.
In 1897 he was forced to break in a new glove when the old one wore out after nine years.
Delahanty’s work in the field was overshadowed by his slugging, as Babe Ruth’s would be 30 years later. Del had a strong, accurate arm, got the ball away as fast as anybody in the league, and made his share of game-saving catches.
Despite their super outfield, the Phillies could finish no higher than third during this span. In 1893 they were first or second until August, when injuries knocked them out of the race.
Thompson’s last full season was 1896. A bad back kept him out of all but a few games in the next two years. He retired to Detroit, where he was an active advisor to Tigers front office magnate Frank Navin, became deputy U. S. Marshal and a court bailiff, and played amateur ball.
In September 1906 a series of injuries left the Tigers shorthanded, and the 46-year-old Thompson was pressed into service for eight games.
Taking his time at the start of an inning, he would stand on the right field foul line adjusting his new-fangled sun-glasses, One day, the pitcher threw and the batter hit a line drive down the line where Sam was still fiddling with the glasses. He looked up just in time to catch the ball.
During the 1918 flu epidemic, Thompson wore a surgeon’s face mask while registering immigrant women seeking permits to work in war material production plants.
It saved him from the flu, but caused him a distressing moment one day. A habitual tobacco chewer, he forgot he had the gauze protector over his mouth and expectorated into it.
Thompson died in Detroit on November 7, 1922. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1974.
Billy Hamilton was traded to Boston in 1896 for Billy Nash, who managed the Phillies that year. Hamilton played another six years before his legs gave out.
He managed in the minors from 1903 until 1916, then scouted for the Braves. Hamilton died in Worcester, Massachusetts, on December 15, 1940, and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1961.
Tuck Turner was traded to St. Louis with Joe Sullivan for outfielder Duff Cooley on June 30, 1895, then went down to the Western League.
Turner died on Staten Island on July 16, 1945, and did not rate an obituary in The Sporting News or the New York Times.
Many of the Phillies deserted to the American League in 1901. Those who stayed departed the following year. Ed Delahanty was among them.
He signed with Washington for $4,000 and led the AL at .376. But years of fast living and failure to stay in shape caught up with him in 1903.
Disgruntled with his salary, he was tempted by an offer from John McGraw of the New York Giants, who sent him a $4,000 advance, which he promptly spent.
But by now the two leagues had signed a peace treaty, and the Giants were forced to return Del to Washington.
Meanwhile, a player named George Davis jumped the White Sox and signed with the Giants in defiance of the treaty – and seemed to be getting away with it.
Steamed at this inequity, Delahanty headed to New York. He left the Washington club in Detroit on July 2 and boarded a train for Buffalo. He was drunk.
On the train he kept ringing the bell in the Pullman car, lit up a cigar in a no-smoking section, smashed a door, and reportedly went through the sleeper car grabbing men and women by their feet and pulling them from the berths.
Irate passengers complained to the conductor, who stopped the train and ejected Delahanty without his baggage. He was left standing at the Canadian end of the bridge over the Niagara River.
According to a night watchman on the bridge, Del started to walk across. Maybe the drawbridge was open. Maybe he jumped. Maybe he fell into the river. Maybe he was pushed off the bridge during a scuffle with the watchman.
His body was found a week later in the river below Niagara Falls.
Big Ed made it to the Hall of Fame in 1945.
