Bagby Flashes but Soon Will Fade
Retelling the 1920 Indians’ story
For Jim Bagby, May 10, 1920, was a great day in his greatest season. It’s best that he could not see this future. It might have spoiled his joy.
Bagby ended the day 6–0 in a season that would bring him 31 wins. But he was no Denny McLain. Even comparisons to Mark Fidyrich are weak because Bagby’s success did not resonate across the country. He just helped the Indians win their first pennant, and World Series. Then his career faded.
On this day, Bagby allowed three runs, 15 hits, walked none and pitched the entire game. His home run provided the Tribe’s seventh run, a big enough cushion to keep him on the mound after the St. Louis Browns scored three late but meaningless runs. Baseball Reference doesn’t even list the homer as one of the game’s top five plays.
The previous day, the Indians ended a nine-game road trip before catching a train to Cleveland. Two days later, they were in Boston for the first of eight more games on the road. The Browns game was a rainout makeup for the second game of the season on April 15.
It put the Indians a half game ahead of the Red Sox in the young season.
By modern standards, Bagby’s name should have been shouted from the mountaintops. It was not.
His name gets only one mention, not even a verb, in Bill James’ Historical Abstract. It’s merely a note that he had the most wins in a season for the 1920s.
He won 65 games in prior seasons but his only mention in SABR’s Deadball Stars of the American League is as one of the quality pitchers acquired by owner Jim Dunn.
Bagby led the league in innings pitched (339.2), games (48, including 38 starts) and batters faced (1,355). He definitely was not on a pitch count and perhaps that is a clue to his future.
His ERA faded to 4.70 in 191 innings the next season. By 1922, he was pitching and failing in Pittsburgh, his final fling in the majors.
SABR’s Stephen Constantelos found the rest of Bagby’s playing days were in the minors: Seattle, Atlanta, Rochester, Jersey City, Newark, Monroe and York. His “fadeaway”, once praised by Babe Ruth, apparently wasn’t fading enough.
Supporting the concept of overuse, Constantelos noted that Bagby pitched in 11 of 18 Indians games during a stretch of 1918. That included four complete games, four saves and 62 innings.
So, there was nothing unusual about Bagby pitching a complete game on the May 10 game against the Browns, and it really wasn’t so strange that he homered, either. He hit .252 for the season and became the first pitcher to hit a home run in the World Series.
What does seem strange is that the Plain Dealer didn’t even mention the homer in the game story. Henry P. Edwards wrote like he was talking about a buddy in a beer league.
“Our old friend Sarge pitched a typical Bagby game,” he wrote. “Making hits off his varied assortment of speedless efforts was a simple task for the Browns. Scoring runs was a different matter. The Sarge yesterday reminded one of Dusty Rhoades. Bagby allowed at least one safe hit in every inning except the second and now and then yielded two or three in a single round.
“Nevertheless, the Browns never scored until the eighth inning when, with the score 7 to 0 in favor of Cleveland, Bagby apparently became a trifle more careless than usual. He let them bunch three hits for two runs in that inning and let them construct another tally in the ninth by means of three hits after two were out. Jim never worried even when the redoubtable Sisler was at bat with two or three on the sacks.”
Careless? A hundred years later it seems he was gassed!
Sports writers have always been allowed a more casual style than expected of other reporters but introducing the main subject of a story with a nickname would seem strange by any standard. It is not clear to me if it was a mistake or just folksy style. That was the first mention of George Sisler in the entire story, too.
Bagby gain the “Sarge” tag in World War I. He was playing ball. The Sarge nickname came from a Broadway play character named “Sergeant Jimmy Bagby.”
Our style-challenged reporter calls him by a nickname, alleges he is “speedless” and compares him to a previous star pitcher whose name he misspells. It’s a wonder he didn’t mention the other Jim Bagby, the one who was born to this day’s starter a few years earlier and later appeared in two All-Star games. Maybe he’d call the tot “Babe.”
Jim Bagby Jr. was born in Cleveland in 1916 and won 96 games with the Red Sox, Indians and Pirates. They were the first father-and-son combination to pitch in the World Series.
For speedless Bagby, the good times didn’t last too long and were not particularly fruitful. He made $4,500 in 1920, later rising to $7,000 in the terrible 1923 season with the Pirates. Following his minor-league years, the elder Bagby ran a gas station and held other jobs, even umpiring in the Coastal Plain and Piedmont leagues.
In 1942 he suffered a stroke and gave up umpiring, turning to a job at an Atlanta department. A second stroke killed him in 1954 in Marietta, Georgia.
A poignant anecdote about Bagby’s wife, Mabel, reveals how different life was for baseball families in that era. A diabetic who had two amputations, she wrote to the 1955 television show “Strike it Rich” begging for help in buying a wheelchair and a sewing machine. Football star Elroy “Crazy Legs” Hirsch won $300 for her. The Indians chipped in another $100 and an Atlanta clothing company added $250.
Jim Bagby is buried in Cobb County, Georgia.
Play it again!
A recreation of this game using Strat-O-Matic is below. Don’t expect the same result!
Previous blog posts:
The Spitter Starts Sliding Out of Baseball
It Happens Every Spring — in Cleveland Anyway
Cleveland Fans Party — Tribe Style
Throwing it around in the old days
Dave Scott was a newspaper writer and editor for 40 years. He is a lifelong baseball fan and a member of the Society for American Baseball Research for decades, although SABR records might indicate I skipped my dues on occasion! DavidAScott@gmail.com I owe a great debt to the Cleveland Public Library for its excellent resources.
I make no money from this blog. Please consider sharing it on your social media. New editions come every Wednesday (well, not this time! I was distracted). Let me know if you want an email notice when it is posted.
The following have helped me tremendously with editing, error correction and technical advice:
David Bodemer
Ken Krsolovic
Joe Shaw
Vince Guerrieri
Thanks to all of you!
Altered reality
Strat-O-Matic makes no claim to recreate results exactly and makes no effort to replicate earned run average. Instead, it designs the cards, whether actual paper products or electronic replications, to produce the hits, walks and other components of ERA for every pitcher.
In this game Bagby allows 14 hits, one fewer than he did in the real May 10, 1920, game at League Park. The score turned out a lot different. The Browns lit up Bagby for eight runs including a homer by Jack Tobin. It was close until the eighth when Uhle was called in but he allowed four unearned runs in an inning and a third.
The last gasp was in the bottom of the eighth inning when Tris Speaker came up with the bases loaded. He bounced into an inning-ending double play. Strat also declines to make legendary players perform miracles every game. That would be boring.
I hope to have a Netplay game each week, so if you are a Strat-O-Matic player, let me know you would like to play. DavidAScott@gmail.com
