Dartmouth Baseball in 1906
A memorial account of the late Harry McDevitt '07 in the DARTMOUTH ALUMNI MAGAZINE brought to mind the former prominent position of baseball as a college sport at Dartmouth and elsewhere. Prior to World War I all colleges possessed not only baseball teams but good ones. The recruiting of players with baseball talent was common though not openly admitted. Playing summer baseball for money resulted in subsequent disbarment, as happened to many members of the 1907 club. At Hanover, attendance in the covered grandstand was high. The band turned out. Hot dogs and mustard were consumed in quantity. Dartmouth schedules consisted of 30 or 31 games (with 15 wins), including such strong opponents as Harvard, Yale, Holy Cross (3 games) and Princeton. Amherst, Williams and Tufts afforded worthy opposition; even Andover then played a college grade of ball. Thirteen home games in 1906, with only one loss and one tie, was a good showing, especially when contrasted with a modern schedule which has only about that number of games in total.
Hanover weather in spring, then as now, was not conducive to early home games or outdoor practice, nor was there much battery work. Hence it speaks volumes for the quality of the players, who always made a good showing in spite of sleepless travel in rough-riding Pullmans. The season started, if weather permitted, with a game against a weak team, such as Norwich, played on the campus. Home plate was near Rollins Chapel, and a homerun would roll to the front door of the Hanover Inn. This opening game would be followed by a spring trip, during which teams like Cornell, Villanova, Yale, Virginia and North Carolina would be encountered. This was followed by a series of home games, including four during Prom Week.
Lef us take a quick look at the baseball club in the spring of 1906, when McDevitt was the leading hitter (.305) and the only one above .300. The team was of the "good field, no hit" type. The batting order read: O'Brien, Capt., If; McDevitt, cf; Gardiner, lb; Page, 3b; pitcher; Richardson, ss; McLane, lb; Main, c; Driscoll, 2b. The pitchers were Skillin, Johnny Glaze, and Sid Hazelton; Shoppelry was the spare catcher. In the accompanying photo of this team, Skillin 'OB, a southpaw, seems hardly more than a high-school boy, yet his showing was so good he was elected captain of the 1907 team. Johnny Glaze 'OB, the captain of the 1908 club, was also a football star; he captained and quarterbacked the 1907 team that downed Harvard in the Stadium, 22-0. Gardiner resembled Babe Ruth; he took such a healthy swing at the ball that he was magnificent to watch, even if he went down swinging! Bill Page '06, subsequently a player in an industrial league, and Sid Hazelton, a baseball coach at Dartmouth for some years, are the only ones still living of whom the writer is aware.
Lacking other opponents, a team of worthy opponents could always be made up of the "Ineligibles." The members were students from the Medical School (such as Tom McCabe 'O5, a catcher on that club; he also umpired many of the home games), and men whose scholastic achievements were temporarily at a low ebb. They could often beat the varsity, but it was all in the family.
Bill Page '06, who now lives in Camp Hill, Pa., related the following impressions to me; except for the fact that they had 48° below zero and 113 continuous days of sleighing one winter, they are all about baseball. Concerning trips away from home, he said, "After hearing and reading about the many colleges and universities, it was nice to see their campuses, buildings, libraries, student bodies, and their reactions to a win or loss on the ball field. I well recall the 3-2 loss to Cornell; we watched a lacrosse game in the morning for awhile most of us had never seen that game before. The close games we lost stand out in my mind more clearly than the ones in which we were successful. The 16-inning game at Williamstown, for instance. With two down and a man on 3rd in the last half of the 16th, Kid Richardson at short gave a hot one the privilege of going through his legs, and the 3-2 game was history. I made two errors during the season: one that they said was too high for Bug Gardiner in the Yale game at New Haven and the other at Holy Cross on Memorial Day in 1906, opening day for their new grounds - there were 12,000 paid admissions. Jack Flynn, their big first baseman, later with Pittsburgh, laid a bunt to third; I went after it like a house afire, it jumped over my hands - I turned and could scarcely believe it when I saw the ball rolling on. I will never forget my feeling, for I wasn't missing them in those days."
Concerning summer ball: "I recall the disbarment of most of the team for playing summer ball. In fact, Mike O'Brien was on the carpet for the same thing before our season started. I played and captained a team at Plymouth, N. H., my junior summer, but worked at the soda fountain in Pepper's Drug Store. Of course, Mr. Pepper, a baseball enthusiast, permitted me to be off duty for baseball practice and games. For one game on which there was a lot of betting we had a Boston National League pitcher come up, and he gracefully lost the game by giving their second baseman a ball which was good enough for a homerun. He was quite anxious to have his name omitted.
"I was with the Bell Telephone Co. for 42 years and retired December 1, 1948. I played baseball actively for 15 years after graduation. When I was playing for the company's Pittsburgh team, I made one play I would like to have made in college - an unassisted triple play. No one down, men on second and third. A sharp drive between third and short. I tagged the man off second and beat the man back to third. Pretty lucky I guess."
MR. ALLEN is Professor of Chemistry at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Though not a Dartmouth man, he has always had a keen interest in the College. He is the son of Frederick J. Allen '89; the grandson of Dr. Charles H. "Type" Hitchcock, Hall Professor of Geology and Mineralogy from 1868 to 1908; and the nephew of Edwin L. Allen '99. He often visited Hanover and began his interest in Dartmouth baseball in the spring of 1906.
The 1906 Team: Front row (l to r) Richardson ss, McLane rf, Driscoll 2b, Hazelton p, Glaze p, Brown mgr; back row Main c, Gardiner lb, Capt. O'Brien lf,Skillin p, McDevitt cf, Page 3b.
