RetroSimba

Technically, John McGraw turned down an offer to manage the Cardinals. Actually, though, he was their de facto manager for part of a season.

The question of whether McGraw was or wasn’t the Cardinals’ manager made headlines in August 1900. After manager Patsy Tebeau resigned, Cardinals president Frank Robison said publicly that McGraw, the Cardinals’ captain and third baseman, agreed to be player-manager. McGraw said Robison was mistaken.

A peculiar compromise was reached: A member of the Cardinals’ business staff, Louis Heilbroner, who had no baseball experience, became manager and sat on the bench in that role during games. McGraw made out the lineups, decided which pitchers to use and ran the team on the field.

“It appears McGraw is manager with a scapegoat in the person of Mr. Heilbroner … in case he fails to make the team win,” the St. Louis Republic declared.

Two months later, after the Cardinals went 23-25 in the 48 games managed by the Heilbroner/McGraw tandem, McGraw departed St. Louis for Baltimore. He eventually went on to become manager of the New York Giants, attaining three World Series titles and 10 National League pennants.

McGraw totaled 2,763 wins, though none were credited to him for his role with the Cardinals. Only Connie Mack (3,731) and Tony La Russa (2,902) achieved more wins as managers.

Good times, bad times

Born and raised in Truxton, N.Y., a village 65 miles west of Cooperstown, McGraw was 12 when his mother and four of his siblings died in a diphtheria epidemic. He moved in with a neighbor to escape a father who beat him.

Advancing from local sandlot baseball to the professional ranks, McGraw was 18 when he reached the majors with the 1891 Baltimore Orioles. He began as a utility player before developing into “a brilliant third baseman … who brought a keen, incisive mind to the national game, a fighter of the old school whose aggressiveness inspired his teammates,” according to the New York Times.

Nicknamed Little Napoleon by the press and Mugsy by his foes, McGraw, 26, became player-manager of the 1899 Orioles. In August, his wife, Mary, 22, died of acute appendicitis. After the season, the Orioles, a National League franchise, disbanded, and McGraw went to play for the Cardinals when the club agreed to waive from his contract the reserve clause which bound a player to a team.

Joining a club that featured three future Hall of Fame players _ left fielder Jesse Burkett, shortstop Bobby Wallace and pitcher Cy Young _ McGraw played third base and ignited the offense. His .505 on-base percentage was tops in the league. He totaled 115 hits, 85 walks and was plunked by pitches 23 times. McGraw struck out a mere nine times in 447 plate appearances.

Yet, the 1900 Cardinals were underachievers, losing 15 of 20 games in June. As the St. Louis Republic noted, “Baseball players are nervous, sensitive mortals … Despite all the hot air about … every man … pulling hard to win … it is a cinch that one-third of the team has no use or love for the other two-thirds.”

Big change is coming

The Cardinals staggered into August with a 34-42 record. Manager Patsy Tebeau had seen enough.

Born in north St. Louis near 22nd and Branch streets, Oliver Wendell Tebeau learned baseball on the Happy Hollow diamond beneath Goose Hill and became a member of the Shamrock Club team, earning the Irish nickname Patsy despite a French-Canadian surname. He went on to be a standout first baseman in the majors and managed the Cleveland club before going back to St. Louis.

Tebeau submitted his resignation to Cardinals president Frank Robison in early August 1900. Robison asked Tebeau to reconsider and to at least finish the season as manager, but Tebeau was obdurate. He and Robison agreed to stay mum about the decision until a replacement could be found.

Robison offered the job to McGraw.

On Aug. 19, 1900, the Reds won at St. Louis, 8-5, dropping the Cardinals’ record to 42-50. Afterward, Robison met in his office with seven St. Louis newspaper reporters and told them Tebeau had resigned and McGraw had accepted an offer to replace him. “Mr. McGraw will manage the club in Mr. Tebeau’s place,” Robison said. “He will have full charge of the team on the field.”

Robison also told the reporters that his secretary, Louis Heilbroner, would be business manager, acting as Robison’s representative on road trips.

That night, a St. Louis Republic reporter tracked down McGraw at the Southern Hotel, where he stayed. “I have accepted the management of the St. Louis club,” McGraw told the newsman.

Not so fast

The morning newspapers on Aug. 20 reported McGraw was manager of the Cardinals, but McGraw told the afternoon St. Louis Post-Dispatch a different story. He claimed he rejected Robison’s offer. “I would not be doing myself justice to accept the management of the team at the present time,” McGraw said to the Post-Dispatch. “I would be held responsible for any shortcomings that the team might show, and I do not care to accept this responsibility.”

As the St. Louis Republic saw it, “McGraw is evidently a bit leery of … trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s (ear), of converting a losing team into a winning one. Though the team is strong enough to win, it is badly disorganized and full of cliques. McGraw is not sure of his ground. He doubts the fidelity of his men.”

To appease McGraw, Frank Robison and his brother, club treasurer Stanley Robison, named Louis Heilbroner as manager but all agreed McGraw would run the team on the field.

“Mr. McGraw has complete charge of the team,” Heilbroner told the St. Louis Republic. “He can … change any player, bench any player, do as he pleases with the men on the field. At least that is my understanding.”

Stanley Robison said to the Post-Dispatch, “McGraw … will have entire charge of the players when on the field. He will place the pitchers and his orders will govern their conduct during the game. Louis Heilbroner … will occupy the manager’s seat on the bench but he will not in any way interfere with McGraw’s orders.”

Most comfortable dressed in a buttoned shirt with collar and cuffs, Heilbroner was 4-foot-9, barely weighed more than 100 pounds and had a “thin, piping voice,” according to the Post-Dispatch. Many of the players he was tasked with managing  had reputations for being roughnecks.

Labeling Heilbroner, 39, as “simply a straw man,” the Republic added, “Everyone knows that Mr. Heilbroner makes not even the ordinary fan’s pretensions to knowing baseball. He is a capital business man, a first-class fellow, but he does not know baseball.”

Home alone

That afternoon, Aug. 20, “not more than 800 enthusiasts” showed up at League Park to see the visiting Reds play the Cardinals, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat reported. According to the Republic, “not enough persons were in the stands to start a game of pinochle.”

Not even McGraw was a spectator. He stayed in the clubhouse, claiming he was “under the weather,” the Globe-Democrat reported, and leaving poor Heilbroner to fend for himself in his debut as manager.

Heilbroner did a sensible thing: He gave the ball to Cy Young. Unfortunately, Young’s pitching didn’t earn any awards that day. He gave up 11 runs and was heckled from the stands before Heilbroner lifted him after six innings.

Young “dressed hurriedly and sought to even up matters in some way,” the Republic reported. “He hied himself to the grandstand and picked out a spectator who had called him a rank quitter … (Young’s) wife was seated beside the individual who roasted him while he was on the rubber. The spectator took Cy’s scolding and slunk away without making a reply.”

The Reds won, 15-7, but as the Post-Dispatch noted, “Mr. Heilbroner is not losing any sleep over the situation. He sat on the players’ bench and seemed to enjoy the game. He does not pretend to know anything about baseball from a playing standpoint (and) virtually admits that he is a figurehead.”

McGraw sat alongside Heilbroner on the bench the next day, Aug. 21, and the Cardinals beat the Reds, 9-8.

One and done

McGraw was one of two future Hall of Fame managers playing for the 1900 Cardinals. The other was his friend, catcher Wilbert Robinson, but Heilbroner remained Cardinals manager until season’s end. The Cardinals finished at 65-75 _ 42-50 with Tebeau and 23-25 with Heilbroner.

(According to John Wray of the Post-Dispatch, Heilbroner wasn’t a pushover during his stint as skipper. After Heilbroner rejected a request from pitcher Jack Powell for a pay advance, “Powell started to stuff Louie into the safe but changed his mind when the little man confronted him with such a barrage of language and threats that Big Jack fell back.”)

Because the Cardinals had waived the reserve clauses in the contracts of McGraw and Wilbert Robinson as incentive to come to St. Louis, both men became free agents after the 1900 season. McGraw returned to Baltimore, becoming part owner and player-manager of the new Orioles franchise in the American League. Robinson went with him.

In July 1902, McGraw jumped from the Orioles to the Giants and had his greatest successes, building a reputation as “the molder of championship clubs, a stickler for discipline and a martinet who saw that his orders were rigidly enforced both on and off the field,” the New York Times noted.

Patsy Tebeau never returned to baseball after leaving the Cardinals. He ran a popular saloon on North Sixth Street in St. Louis, but became despondent after his health deteriorated and his wife left him. He committed suicide at 53.

Outfielder Patsy Donovan replaced Louis Heilbroner as Cardinals manager for the 1901 season.

Heilbroner went on to scout for the Cardinals and St. Louis Browns before operating a respected baseball statistical service. He published the annual Baseball Blue Book of statistics and records. “His statistics did as much to build up the game as any one factor,” the Globe-Democrat reported.