Baseball is a funny game. The biggest figure ever in it was called Babe. A man nicknamed Duke was also called a Bum. And a man called King was sold for a mere $10,000.
At the time, though, there was no "mere" about it.
February 14, 1887: Michael Joseph Kelly, sometimes (erroneously) called baseball's 1st true superstar, has his contract sold by the Chicago White Stockings to the Boston Beaneaters, for the price of $10,000 -- about $308,000 in 2022 money. It doesn't sound like much compared to modern baseball salaries. But it was far and away a record at that point.
Born on New Year's Eve, December 31, 1857, in Troy, New York, across the Hudson River from Albany, the catcher had helped the White Stockings (they became the Cubs in 1903) win National League Pennants in 1880, 1881, 1882, 1885 and 1886.
At the time, the stereotypical American city dweller, and especially the stereotypical baseball player, was a man of Irish descent and little if any education or money, and loved a good song, a good drink, and a good fight. And so, Mike Kelly was beloved, not just in the heavily-Irish city of Chicago, but in every city where baseball was played. He was talented, handsome and personable, and fans who would never have accepted Queen Victoria of Britain as their reigning monarch had no trouble calling him "King."
He inspired a rule change: There was a game in Chicago in which he wasn't playing, and a ball was popped up. He ran onto the field, yelling, "Kelly now catching for Chicago!" so that the umpire could hear, and he caught the ball. Since there was no rule against it, the umpire had to rule the batter out. The following season, the rule was changed: No substitutions in mid-play, except for injury. (In other words, a player hit with a pitch and too injured to continue could have a substitute take the base to which he was entitled.)
He is believed to have invented the hook slide, making him the subject of the song "Slide, Kelly, Slide." (He was not, however, the inspiration for the song "Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly?" That didn't come along until 1908.) There are those who believe he was the inspiration for Ernest Thayer's 1888 poem "Casey at the Bat," and, unwilling to let the facts get in the way of a good story, he recited it in his vaudeville act, often getting the words wrong.
But he feuded with team management, including his manager, also the 1st baseman, Adrian Constantine "Cap" Anson; and the owner, former pitcher and now sporting goods magnate Al Spalding. In 1885, Anson saw how out of shape his players had gotten in the off-season, and took them to Hot Springs, Arkansas, to "boil the beer out of them." Thus was Spring Training invented. It didn't work, and -- probably a coincidence -- Hot Springs eventually became a very corrupt city, loaded with illegal casinos.
Despite being a former player, Spalding had no problem doing whatever it took to hold salaries down. But he also had no problem doing whatever it took to keep players in line, and, if that meant giving Anson money to spend on private detectives to follow his more troublesome players around, then, so be it.
One detective hired by Anson reported lurid details of drinking and debauchery. Anson decided to bluff Kelly into confessing, saying the detective found him in a saloon at 3:00 in the morning, drinking lemonade. Kelly was outraged: "It was straight whiskey! I never drank a lemonade at that hour in my life!"
In the Winter of 1886-87, Kelly said he would not report to the White Stockings. He was 29 years old, and the best player in baseball, coming off a season in which he'd batted .388. But Spalding had had enough of the boozing and the womanizing. He sold off speedy outfielder George Gore to the New York Giants, and Kelly to the Beaneaters.
The fans of Chicago were devastated, and gave him a standing ovation for his 1st at-bat back with the Beaneaters. Although he didn't lead them to a Pennant, he became nearly as popular among Boston's Irish-Americans as the Heavyweight Champion of the World, John L. Sullivan.
In 1888, Kelly dictated Play Ball: Stories of the Ball Field to Boston baseball writer Jack Drohan, making him the 1st baseball player to "write an autobiography." Despite his reputation as a braggart and a drunk, which would suggest that he would be an "unreliable narrator," research has shown that most of his stories have checked out, and the book is a godsend to people studying baseball in the 1880s.
In 1890, he was a willing participant in the Players' League revolt, and he led the PL's Boston Reds to the Pennant, his 6th league title. It would be his last, as age and his lifestyle caught up with him. He played his last major league game on September 2, 1893, and his last professional game in August 1894. Pneumonia, combined with the toll of years of alcoholism, killed him at age 36, on November 8, 1894, in Boston.
He was married, but his only child had died shortly after birth, earlier in 1894. The Baseball Hall of Fame was not established until 1936. When it elected him in 1945, there was no one available to accept his plaque. Had he taken better care of himself, he would then have been 87.
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February 14, 1887 was a Monday. Baseball and football were out of season. Basketball did not yet exist, and hockey barely did. So there were no scores on this historic day.
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