This Glove Business...

This past weekend we played against our rivals from right across the Mississippi River, the Belleville Stags. The Stags are a young organization but filled with experienced players, so they are no "easy out" despite us beating them in both games. The Stags also have quite the marketing department, complete with programs and apparel for purchase.  It is this apparel that brings me to the topic.  They have T-shirts which display the Stags emblem on the front and a quote on the back. This is how the quote reads:

     "This glove business has gone a little too far.  True, hot-hit balls do sting a little at the opening of the season, but after you get used to it, there is no trouble on that score."  -- Bid McPhee

Obviously that is a very apropos quote for a vintage base ball team since the most obvious difference between the vintage game and the modern game is the lack of gloves.  But it got me to wondering: "Just who was Bid McPhee?"

Voted into the Hall of Fame in 2000...
101 years after his final game

There are many interesting things about Bid McPhee.  He is one of only three Hall of Fame players in history to have played his entire career with the Cincinnati Reds (Johnny Bench and Barry Larkin are the others). To this day he holds the Major League record for most putouts by a Second Baseman for both a career and for a single season.  And to add even more context to those records, you must consider the sentence that reads "...THE LAST SECOND BASEMAN TO PLAY WITHOUT A GLOVE..."  As it turns out, McPhee finally agreed to use a glove for his last four seasons (1896 - 1899) and in his first season using a glove, set a mark for fielding percentage (that is...percentage of fielding "chances" without an error) that stood for the next 29 years.  That is a remarkable career no matter how you look at it.

But the wording got me wondering some more...that is a very specific statement: "the last second baseman.' So, back to the google machine I went to find out if Bid McPhee was the last PLAYER to play without a glove.  And the answer is...it depends.

Jerry Denny is listed as "the last position player to play his entire career without a glove."  Denny played from 1881 to 1894, retiring a full two years before Bid McPhee put on a glove.  But technically, the mark is still accurate since McPhee did not "play his entire career" without a glove.  But then, I started thinking of the specifics of Jerry Denny's mark: "the last position player..." meaning that some pitchers were still playing without gloves after Denny, and perhaps even after McPhee.
 
Curious, I went back for some more research.  The closest I can gather is that the last actual player to have played a game without a glove was this man:

Joe Yeager was a Detroit Tigers pitcher in 1902 when he split his hand open in a game against Boston.  The Newspaper account from the game included a notation that read:

   "Pitcher Yeager's split hand is due to the fact that he refuses to wear a fielding glove."

Yeager did not pitch well for the Tigers in 1902, finishing with a record of 6-12, but he stuck with the Tigers as a position player after that, playing 107 games at Third Base.  He is listed in Tigers history as "the last Tiger to play without a glove."  Although this is not exhaustive research on my part, I think it's safe to assume that Yeager played the field without a glove after Bid McPhee retired and if he's not the actual last player to have played gloveless, he has to be close.  He finished his career right here in St. Louis with the Browns in 1908.

Back to Bid McPhee and his quote about balls stinging at the opening of the season but not being much trouble after that.  It's one of the questions I'm asked most about catching without a glove, and I'd have to say that McPhee's quote is pretty accurate.  This is a photo of my hand after my first match:

Stings a little on the pad of the thumb.

But now, four months and 24 matches into the season I don't even notice it.  The trick is that you learn to cradle the ball into your hands...

Concentrate...concentrate...cradle.

...and you learn how to use the rules of the game to your advantage...

A good scout will kill the opposing team's offense.

The rules in 1860 (and on up until around 1867) allowed for an out ("hand down") to be recorded if the ball was caught by a fielder on the first bounce (or "bound").  This rule makes a significant difference in playing the outfield, as a speedy, sure-handed outfielder (or "scout") can take hits away from even the best hitters ("strikers").  A ball driven into the alleys between the scouts can still be turned into a hand down if the scout can get there and cradle it into his hands on the first bound.  My team, the Perfectos, uses this to our advantage regularly by playing our quickest and most sure-handed fielders (Hawkeye, Pitchfork, and myself) in the outfield.  Runners can still advance on the bases once the ball hits the ground but it allows us to play for sure outs on the bounds and only resort to catching the ball in the air when there is a runner on third with less than two hands down.  Even then, once you learn how to properly catch the ball, errors ("muffs") are rare and bruises even rarer.

Nevertheless, Bid McPhee, Jerry Denny, and Joe Yeager, you have my profound respect for sticking to your gloveless guns as the game was changing around you.  Huzzah!

Dixie