A Clever Base-Ballist: The Life and Times of John Montgomery Ward

by Bryan Di Salvatore

A biography of professional baseball pioneer John Montgomery Ward is set against the backdrop of the early history of the sport as its describes his masterminding of a successful players' revolt against the financial tyranny of the team owners. 25,000 first printing.

Genres: Baseball, Biography, Sports, Nonfiction

496 pages, Hardcover

First published July 27, 1999

About the author

Bryan Di Salvatore is a Missoula-based writer, English professor, and longtime contributor to The New Yorker.

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A biography about John Ward written in the 1990s. Ward was an all star pitcher and batter in early professional baseball in the latter 19th century. He also played a major role in organizing labor unions and Ward was eventually inducted into Cooperstown.

This lengthy bio was impeccably researched and was possible because of the thousands of newspaper articles written about Ward as he was a top player for almost 20 years. You won’t find many 400 page bios of 19th century American figures who aren’t presidents, military leaders or titans of industry.

The writing mechanics and sentence construction were also good. However the story was at times too dense with facts for a casual baseball fan. There were not always great transitions between major thought threads and despite the detailed research the bio generally lacked context, i.e. what was going in elsewhere in the country and world while they were playing ball in Egypt?

Lastly, John Ward and his personality did not jump out of the pages for me. I would say the bio garners 4 stars for an avid baseball fan and there is little like it covering this era and maybe 2 stars for a passing fan or non-fan so an average rating of 3.

[Richard Levine · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a lifelong baseball fan, I've read a fair number of baseball books in my life, but never before had I waded into the story of 19th century baseball, when professional baseball started to become American's national pastime. This book -- although it's nearly twenty years old -- was a terrifically interesting starting point. It's a biography of one of the lesser-known men in the Baseball Hall of Fame, the 19th century player John Montgomery Ward, but author Bryan DiSalvatore covers a lot of other ground in recounting Ward's life and times. Ward played in the earliest days of professional baseball, from 1878 to 1894, and starred first as a pitcher and later as an infielder. But he was most notable as the leader of the Brotherhood of Professional Base Ball Players, the first organized labor movement of professional athletes, which after several years of battle with the established professional baseball leagues, started its own new league in 1890, called the Players' League. The new league failed after a single season, but the issues that motivated the rebellion -- primarily, the existence of the "reserve clause", which bound players to team "ownership" for as long as the team wanted the player's services -- remained unresolved for generations, ultimately leading to the major leagues players' union and the labor disputes that have continued to this day.

Ward was not your usual ballplayer. While he dropped out (or was expelled) from Pennsylvania State College before starting his baseball career, he resumed his studies several years later while playing in New York and earned his law degree from Columbia. (When he retired after the 1894 season, he was still a productive player, but he decided to begin a career as a New York lawyer.) He wrote articles and a book about baseball during his playing career, and had a colorful personal life, with marriage to a famous stage actress and some notorious affairs. So while there is, of course, a lot of baseball in the book, DiSalvatore often is able to use Ward's life as a jumping off point for discussions of other aspects of late 19th century America -- among other things, life in small town Pennsylvania, labor relations generally, racism, the notion of "manliness," Americans' ignorance of the wider world (during an off-season round the world baseball exhibition tour in 1888-89, the players arrived in Rome and were shocked when they were denied permission to play a game in the Colosseum).

But obviously the book is most enjoyable to baseball fans -- or "cranks," as they were called in the 19th century -- especially those who enjoy extended digressions on baseball lore and history. On the first page, for example, after telling us Ward's height and weight (5 foot 8 inches, 140 pounds), DiSalvatore gives us several long lists of contemporary players he was smaller than ("Boileryard Clarke, Jumbo McGinniss, Silver Flint, Cupid Childs, Fatty Briody, Adonis Terry, Podge Weihe, Chicken Wolf. . ."), larger than ("Shorty Radford, Wee Willie Keeler, Trick McSorley, and Buttercup Dickerson"), or about the same size as ("Ubbo Ubbo Hornung, Lip Pike, Ice Box Chamberlain, Oyster Burns, the Only Nolan, Hunkie Hines, Dude Esterbrook, Cannonball Morris, and Bald Billy Barnie.") And in the Acknowledgements he explains how, when trying to track down the possibility that the 7-year old James Joyce attended one of the games played in Ireland during the 1888 world exhibition tour, a correspondent on an Internet Joyce discussion forum made the dubious suggestion that one chapter of Ulysses refers to the use of secret signals reminiscent of the hand signals used by baseball players. My favorite detour of this type was DiSalvatore's explanation of 19th century team mascots (whose role was to ward off superstitions and to jinx the other team) and of the players' often-comical superstitions. (In the chapter titled "What in Thunder Cross-Eyed Men Were Made For.")

In short, if you like reading about baseball, this book is enlightening and fun.

[Riq Hoelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although it's not easy to criticize a book which the author says took four years of his life, and I believe him, shoppers should know that at times this book would be better titled "The Late 19th Century Including a Few Vignettes From the Life of John Montgomery Ward." Yes, this book is symptomatic of the modern trend to make them at least 25% longer than they need to be. The author thinks nothing of spending page after page describing oddities of Ward's hometown which really tells us nothing more about him than the single line "he grew up in the middle class of a small town in Pennsylvania" would have. The entire first chapter is devoted exclusively to speculations on various pictures of Ward without even putting the pictures next to them. There is at least one chapter which fails to mention Ward at all. The narrative wanders off the path often, even in the early going when the reader's attention is most at risk, and stays off for long periods of time. I would have much preferred it if this book had been one of those tall affairs with a great, wide margins and little info boxes along the side. Then one could read or not read the boxes at one's option. Or, it could have been a hypertext document and then if one wanted to read more on some of these topics, click and read more, but no reader should be forced to wade through some of this material, especially as some important details are buried in the middle of it, risking the skimming reader missing it. I suppose the fault is with the editor, but it's difficult to say as words like "faro" and "turnverein" are included without explanation -- maybe originally that wasn't the case. Please note that there are 32 pages of footnotes as well. On the other hand, entirely at the author's door are some very big questions left completely unfielded. Why is there no speculation, for example, about why Ward never participated in that most common of human activities, creating children? Also, in this connection, I am surprised that the possibility that he was tricked into his first marriage by a possible false pregnancy is never considered. His wife was after all an actress and must have been familiar with the trick from the Dramatic tradition. Another important issue: who was Ward actually? What were his politics? He seems a very unlikely revolutionary. Rather, like Aristophanes and W.S. Gilbert, he seems to criticize the system from the right, not because he fails to believe in it, but because he finds those in charge to be no-talent hacks and, significantly, because he can. His "revolution" seems to have been accomplished more by cleverness and opportunism than by principle and reality so naturally it was only a matter of time before the cards came crashing down. A little more of the author's or others' judgement on this would have been welcome, or even just a more inside look at how Ward went about his recruiting and alliance building, but all we get are two sentences. Other than these issues, I did enjoy the book quite a lot and although I cannot recommend it as highly as some others, I feel no doubt that on a research basis at least no stone has been left unturned. Certainly its topic is both rare and enjoyable.

[Danny]

A really great book made just for me. I remember reading about it because William Finnegan speaks highly of it in Barbarian Days. Research was amazing. It creates a rich tapestry of glorious weirdos. The old time baseball players were completely out of their minds. There's also a lot of hilarious anecdotes about city social life around the turn of the century. I thought it was hilarious how there are excerpts of reviews of like half a dozen plays and they all basically say "the play was terrible but the lead actress is a smokeshow."

[Scott Osborne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting topic
Dry reading

[Boyd Addlesperger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best history of baseball book this baseball nerd has ever read.

[Barney · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this book up for $6 at a used bookshop in Santa Cruz and found it money well spent. The "Clever Base ballist" of the title is a now mostly forgotten player with the Awesome handle of John Montgomery Ward. He is not related to the Montgomery Ward of Catalog fame. In his playing days, he was called Monte.

Monte Ward played from 1878 to 1894, married two different Broadway actresses, started the first baseball players union, instigated the 1890 Player's League and also found time to graduate from Colombia Law School. In all, not a bad life! As a player, Ward was one of a kind. He is the only player in major league history to win 100 games as a pitcher and collect 2000 hits. After he injured his arm in 1881, he shifted to the outfield and then to shortstop, playing with the NY Giants from 1883 to 1889. He also wrote an excellent book, How to Be a Ball Player, which is a perfect introduction to the world of 1880s baseball.

Even with all of this, his achievements on the field are secondary to his significance as an historical figure in the game. In 1890, the players revolted against the league magnates and formed their own league. Ward was at the forefront of this action, directed against the reserve clause and the so called "Brush Classification Scheme", both blatant attempts to unilaterally cap salaries. Di Salvatore involves not only the leading sports weeklies of the day (The Sporting Life, New York Clipper) but also the papers of Samuel Gompers and the Knights of Labor. Di Salvatore's writing is level, not celebratory or damning, which in this case is a tremendous asset.

Even though the book is over 10 years old, it is still timely. Much is made by many of the greed of professional athletes, but rarely is the greed of the owners of sports teams invoked. If anything can be learned from this book it is that some things never change. Try this rogues gallery on for size:

1. Arthur Soden: owner of the Boston NL club. Soden was a notorious cheapskate who "routinely forced his own players to buy tickets for their wives". At least two players in the 1890s said that Soden had no idea that they even played for his team.

2. Al Spalding: president of the Chicago White Stockings and onwer of Spalding Sporting goods. Ward, in response to a particularly vicious screed from Spalding, wrote in 1883 that "they call a player who accepts a proffered raise in salary a disorganizer and dangerous character." (192) During the Spalding World Tour, third baseman Ned Williamson injured his knee in England. Spalding made him pay his own way home and refused to pay for his hotel even when Williamson's health forced him to stay behind. (148-49)

Ward was not elected to the Hall of Fame until 1964, 38 years after his death. In the original 1936 voting for the hall, he received 3.6% of the vote, less than baseball's most notorious crook, Hal Chase. Less than the catcher for the great Chicago Cubs teams of the early 1900s (Johny Kling). He was forgotten in the 1930s, but should be celebrated by players everywhere for giving voice to the concerns of the people who actually play the games.

Ward disputed the owners on every level, and himself was quite a character. he was smart enough to fight them at their own game, even if the Player's League of 1890 wound up being a failure. Ward's story is also a nice slice of Gilded Age America. Ward was admired for being a hardworking, intelligent man who made his own way. He was not particularly well liked for speaking his mind or pointing out hypocrisy. Some things never change. Anyone interested in baseball history should read this book, as should anyone who is interested in the pivotal decades of the 1870s to 1920s.