I remember it clearly. It was back in 1997, and I was sitting at my desk in an upstate New York brownstone apartment, reading what was then called "ESPN Sportszone" through my high-powered 56K modem Internet connection, when I stumbled across an essay by Keith Olbermann, then still an integral part of "Sportscenter," called "The Ninth Man."
Olbermann was always a good on-air personality, but this essay cemented what I always suspected -- he was an even better writer. I used several of Olbermann's old ESPN.sportszone.com essays in the freshman writing classes I was teaching at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at the time to demonstrate one point or another, but never this particular one because I didn't believe the standard 18-year-old engineering major would "get" the power of "The Ninth Man."
To truly appreciate this essay, you have to be a baseball fan -- that's "fan" in the linguistic sense, as in "just short for fanatic" -- and you must have a feel for the history of the game and the power of baseball relationships across time. The readers of Batter's Box will understand "The Ninth Man" -- and after all these years, may also understand why, in retrospect, I now believe Olbermann didn't even take the concept far enough. But we'll do so here.
Here is a significant and representative cutting from Olbermann's brilliant little essay -- remember, this was published in 1997, eight years ago:
He is out there somewhere in spring training. He's probably 20 or 21, maybe 22. And he will retire in the year 2016.Right there, in the course of what constitutes a single baseball lineup -- nine men -- Olbermann recaps the entire history of the game. But again, he doesn't take it quite far enough.He will be the grand old man of baseball. And they will say, 'He's so old that the year he broke in, Eddie Murray was still playing.' And he will become the ninth man.
Eddie Murray's the eighth man. When he broke in, Brooks Robinson was still playing. And when Robinson broke in, Bob Feller was still playing. And when Feller broke in, Rogers Hornsby was still playing. And when Hornsby broke in, Honus Wagner was still playing. And when Wagner broke in, Cap Anson was still playing. And when Anson broke in, Dickey Pearce was still playing. And when Pearce broke in, Doc Adams was still playing. Adams played for the Knickerbocker club inthe first organized game of baseball in 1846, number one of the eight men whose careers cover the 152 seasons since. And somewhere out there is the ninth man.
Not to nitpick -- or, in this case, Knickpick -- but to start with the 1846 New York Knickerbocker club, which was an all-amateur "town team" that played many of its games out of Hoboken, NJ (just as the New York Giants and Jets of the modern NFL are based in the Garden State) is a bit misguided -- that was not truly a professional ballclub. Perhaps Olbermann starts here because the Knickerbockers were Alexander Cartwright's team, more or less, and perhaps Olbermann buys the "Alexander Cartwright invented baseball" alternative mythology to the Abner Doubleday myth.
Regardless of Olbermann's motive, it has been long accepted that the first true proto-Major League club, the precursor to the big league game of Blue Jays, Devil Rays and Diamondbacks, was the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings, which completed that 1869 season a perfect 57-0; according to news reports of the time, although the team won more than 70 games, team captain Harry Wright only counted the 57 games played against other National Association clubs as official.
The star of that undefeated Red Stockings team was the captain's brother -- a young 22-year-old shortstop named George Wright, more or less the "A-Rod" of his day, as he was paid the rather unseemly amount of $2,000, or more than 18 percent of his team's payroll, that season.
While these Wright Brothers made baseball fly in Cincinnati, two other Wright brothers (no relation) just a bloop hit up the road in Dayton, Ohio were fixing bicycles and dreaming up airplanes. George eventually landed and taxiied into the Hall of Fame, where his plaque very simply reads "George Wright: Star of baseball's first professional team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings of 1869. Great shortstop and captain of champion Bostons in National League's pioneer years."
So, with all due respect to Doc Adams and to Olbermann, George Wright is the first link in our "ninth man" chain. And speaking of Olbermann, here's where he fell just shy of demonstrating the power of baseball's relationships -- the power of teammates. Sure, it's nice that Bob Feller was still playing when Brooks Robinson broke in, but it's not like they were ever teammtes.
We'll return to our first-link Hall of Fame shortstop in a while, but for now, let's go to the other end of the chain, and who knows, maybe another Hall of Fame shortstop someday.
In 2004, the youngest player in the major leagues was Tampa Bay Devil Rays shortstop B.J. Upton, born in -- gulp -- 1984. Minor league guru John Sickels has written of Upton, "Scouts are certain he'll be a star, and given his performance thus far it is impossible to dispute that assessment." He ended his rookie season with an average of .258 and four homers and though he never shared a dugout with -- in fact, it's possible he actually took the roster spot of -- veteran 1B Fred McGriff, they at the very least played for the same team, the 2004 Devil Rays, and shared space in several spring training game lineups.
McGriff -- fans in Toronto probably remember this guy. The lanky first sacker slammed 124 homers in his Toronto career, and was part of a fairly significant trade that helped the Jays win two World Series trophies. And back in 1987, at the age of 23, McGriff hit .247 and hit 20 homers while sharing time with Willie Upshaw at first, while another teammate, seemingly ageless knuckleballer Phil Niekro logged two of his 274 career losses -- but unfortunately, none of his career 318 wins -- as a Blue Jay. Still, McGriff and Niekro were teammates.
Just as Niekro had been teammates with another 300-game winner, the all-time winningest lefty, Warren Spahn, back in 1964. Sure, Spahn was just 6-13 that year, while Niekro did not record a decision in his 10 appearances, but the very nexus of baseball history met in Milwaukee in that '64 season; it may be possible to build many "ninth man" chains from the 19th to the 21st century, but it's much harder to do so without the Spahn-Niekro link.
The two 300-game winners, teammates ever so briefly, combined to pitch in the majors from 1942 through 1987. Consider for a moment that by 1987, Niekro was the only player in the majors who had even been born in 1942 so you can appropriately consider the magnitude of the Spahn-Niekro link.
And as we start to collect moments of symmetry in this ninth man chain, realize that George Wright founded the Boston team that became the Braves with whom Spahn broke in -- and with whom Niekro retired two cities later for the franchise. And when Spahn was a rookie with the 1942 Boston Braves, one of the men who may have caught one of his two starts or two relief appearances was the Braves' aging former All-Star backstop, Ernie Lombardi.
Lombardi, who won two batting titles and an MVP award, like Niekro and Spahn -- and maybe someday McGriff -- is enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame with George Wright. But back in 1933, before the then-25-year-old Lombardi had done any of those things, he was catching for the Reds -- the successors to Wright's original team, of course -- where one of his teammates was a 49-year-old righty who compiled a 4.02 ERA in 14 relief appearances.
That man was Jack Quinn, who rang up 247 career victories in his 23 years in the majors, though he won at least 20 only once. And that was no typo -- he was actually 49 when Lombardi caught him, one season after he became the oldest man ever to hit a home run in the majors. Quinn is one of only four men to pitch in the majors at age 49 or older; one of the others, of course, is Phil Niekro. See how this all ties -- links -- together so nicely?
And though Quinn's 247 career wins were four more than Juan Marichal and just four less than Bob Gibson, it didn't get him a pass into the Hall of Fame. He had plenty of Hall of Fame teammates in his score-plus years in the bigs, though, including a diminutive outfielder with a nickname to match, the legendary "hit 'em where they ain't" Hall of Famer "Wee" Willie Keeler, all 140 pounds of him.
That's right, when Quinn was a 25-year-old rookie with the 1909 New York Yank ... er, sorry, Highlanders, he posted an impressive 9-5 mark with a 1.97 ERA in 11 starts and 12 relief appearances, while the 37-year-old Keeler was playing 99 games in the outfield for the New Yorkers, finishing up with a near-career-low .264 batting average.
Wee Willie would retire the next year, after just 10 more at-bats (and three hits, so one last .300 season) with the Giants. But he could look back on a glorious career that included 2,938 base hits, 37 of which came for those same Giants in his own rookie season of 1892.
That same year, a century plus a year before Joe Carter would "touch 'em all," Keeler roamed the National League New York outfield with "Orator Jim" O'Rourke, who was busy collecting the last few of his own 2,643 career hits. O'Rourke shares the same trait as Niekro and Quinn of being one of baseball's grand old men to play -- he came out of retirement after 11 seasons in 1904 to catch -- that's right, catch one game for the Giants, collecting a single in four trips to the plate.
A quarter of a century before the big comeback, O'Rourke was a 28-year-old C/1B/3B/OF spending one year with the old Providence Grays. The Grays were a fine club, thanks primarily to the 19-year-old ace John Montgomery Ward who started 60 (and won 47) games for the team, whose starting shortstop -- and player/manager -- was none other than ... George Wright.
So ... B.J. Upton, who was the youngest player in the major leagues last season as a shortstop for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, played with Fred McGriff who played with Phil Niekro who played with Warren Spahn who played with Ernie Lombardi who played with Jack Quinn who playd with Willie Keeler who played with Jim O'Rourke who played with George Wright who started at shortstop for the first all-professional team, the 1869 Cincinnati Reds.
So forget about finding the ninth man in spring training of 1997; he didn't arrive until last season, and the links -- teammate-to-teammate through the decades -- are much stronger.
In fact, some time in, say, 2023, when B.J. Upton is playing first base or DHing for whatever team he's with by then, he might just look around the clubhouse and lock eyes with some teenage hotshot being talked up by legendary and ageless minor league guru John Sickels. And that kid, in his first big league camp right out of high school, will have been born way back in 2005 -- that kid will be The Tenth Man.
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20050220021202197