Days of Reckoning: Players Punching Their Ticket Out of Pittsburgh During the Barney Dreyfuss Era

by Ronald T. Waldo

Players Punching Their Ticket Out of Pittsburgh during the Barney Dreyfuss Era

Since the dawn of baseball disputes between players and management have always existed.

A glorious period of diamond success and pennant glory occurred when Barney Dreyfuss owned the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1900 through 1932. During that time, the Pirates claimed six National League flags, appeared in four World Series’, and won championship titles twice—in 1909 and 1925. After gaining full control of Pittsburgh’s baseball organization in 1901, Dreyfuss acted as the supreme authority regarding all the club’s affairs.

Many talented players pulled on a Pirates uniform throughout the Barney Dreyfuss ownership period. Some of these all-star diamond performers fell out of favor with management through two baseball eras and soon found themselves packing their bags and moving on to another city. The list of stalwart players shown the door when Dreyfuss ruled his diamond empire included Rube Waddell, Jesse Tannehill, Jack Chesbro, Vic Willis, Al Mamaux, Rabbit Maranville, Babe Adams, Max Carey, Kiki Cuyler, Glenn Wright, and Dick Bartell.

An ugly group of gamblers, stationing themselves at Exposition Park and Forbes Field, subjected certain players to their vile comments and disgusting verbal abuse. The actions of these unsavory individuals had a hand in the organization ridding itself of Kitty Bransfield, Claude Ritchey, and Bill Abstein because the constant taunting and heckling affected their performance.

From Waddell to Bartell, Ronald T. Waldo shares why many of the greatest players in Pittsburgh Pirates history were traded or released during Barney Dreyfuss’s tenure owning the team.

Genres: Baseball

422 pages, Paperback

Published October 3, 2023

About the author

Ronald T. Waldo is a historian and author who has written nine books on the subject of baseball history, with many devoted to examining the Deadball Era and the 1920s. A resident of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania his entire life, he graduated from Point Park University in the spring of 1983 with a Bachelor’s Degree in journalism and communications. Following his love and passion for baseball history, Mr. Waldo’s first book, titled, "Fred Clarke: A Biography of the Baseball Hall of Fame Player/Manager," was released in December 2010.

Some of his other books include a biography about Hazen "Kiki" Cuyler, a compilation of stories connected to the life and career of Honus Wagner, and team related works on the 1902 Pittsburgh Pirates, 1925 Pittsburgh Pirates, and 1938 Pittsburgh Pirates. Mr. Waldo's most recent book, published by Sunbury Press on October 3, 2023, is titled, "Days of Reckoning: Players Punching Their Ticket Out of Pittsburgh During the Barney Dreyfuss Era." In 2022, Sunbury Press also released, "Deadball Trailblazers: Single-Season Records of the Modern Era."

Mr. Waldo also participated as a contributing author on the 2018 release, "Unlucky 21: The Saddest Stories and Games in Pittsburgh Sports History," writing the chapter about the 1974-75 Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team titled, “History Gone Bad: Chico and His Men Ruin the Pittsburgh Penguins’ 1975 Playoff Party.”

A longtime member of the Society for American Baseball Research, each of his five books covering baseball’s Deadball Era received nominations for the Larry Ritter Book Award by that organization’s Deadball Era Committee. The committee also selected Mr. Waldo's book, "Deadball Trailblazers: Single-Season Records of the Modern Era," as a finalist for the 2023 Larry Ritter Award. Besides being an avid baseball historian, Mr. Waldo also loves following current baseball, football, hockey, and soccer.

Reviews

[J.B. Manheim · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Days of Reckoning author Ron Waldo portrays a Pittsburgh Pirates organization that was a seething cauldron of personality conflicts and fast dealing during the years leading up to and through the so-called Deadball Era and into the 1920s. Stirring the pot was the man whose ego, temperament and personal style defined the Pirates organization throughout, a man whose name is widely known in the game but whose personal attributes and machinations have not been fully revealed, until now -- Barney Dreyfuss. As he assumed and then exercised ownership of a team that began in the depths of the National League and quickly rose to the top, it was Dreyfuss, Waldo shows us, who pressed the action and who controlled it to the extent he could. He knew and understood his players and his managers, though he did not always like or trust them. But his real love was for the business of the game, and temper tantrums aside, Barney Dreyfuss was all business.

Trading pitcher Rube Waddell from the Pirates to Chicago in exchange for... a cigar? Thwarting an American League raid on the Pirates' roster in the days before the National Agreement brought peace with the National League? Forcing rival Ban Johnson to hide in a bathroom for hours to avoid discovery of his contacts with Pirates players? Trading away a group of mutineers, including a future Hall of Famer? This detail-rich study of personalities and tumultuous events from the formative years of the Pirates -- players and management alike -- with its treasure trove of profiles and lost stories, will hold the interest of anyone with a love of the Pirates and their history, and it will appeal as well to those with a more general interest in that era and in the intensely personal way the business of baseball was, and perhaps still is, conducted.

Some may write of baseball's past as a field of dreams. Waldo shows us it was more often than not a field of schemes.