December 20, 1926: The New York Giants trade their 2nd baseman and Captain, Frankie Frisch, and Jimmy Ring to the St. Louis Cardinals for Rogers Hornsby.
Frisch had led the Giants to 4 straight National League Pennants from 1921 to 1924, including winning the 1921 and 1922 World Series. But on August 20, Giant manager John McGraw berated him in front of his teammates for missing a sign that cost the team a run in a game -- with retroactive irony, against the Cardinals. So he quit the team.
Giants management refused to step in and straighten things out between the manager and his best player. And since McGraw was also a part-owner of the Giants, and had the backing of main owner Charles Stoneham, he was not going to be the one to go. And Ring was a mediocre pitcher nearing the end of the line.
In exchange, the Giants got Hornsby, also a 2nd baseman, and the best hitter in the National League. From 1920 to 1925, Hornsby had won 6 straight NL batting titles, batting .370, .397, .401, .384, .424 (which remains the highest batting average since 1901, and the highest in the NL since 1887) and .403. In 1922 and 1925, he also led the NHL in home runs (with 42 and 39, respectively) and RBIs (152 and 143), becoming the 1st player to win the Triple Crown twice (an achievement since matched only by Ted Williams).
How good a hitter was he? Legend tells of the greatest umpire of that era, Bill Klem, calling a pitch that Hornsby took a ball; and, when the catcher objected, Klem told him, "Young man, when the pitcher throws a strike, Mr. Hornsby will show you." In other words, by hitting it.
Hornsby had also managed the Cardinals in 1925 and '26, and even owned some stock in them. Since he had to divest himself of that stock in order for the trade to go through, and majority owner Sam Breadon was offering less than Hornsby wanted, the trade was held up for a while. But it did go through.
At first, this blockbuster deal looked great for the Giants. The trade was great -- for the Cardinals. Hornsby's attitude was considerably worse than Frisch's, and McGraw had enough of him that 1st season, trading him afterward. The Giants didn't win another Pennant until 1933, after McGraw retired.
McGraw could be one ornery cuss, but Hornsby was nearly impossible to deal with. As would a later slugger, Dick Allen, he put up All-Star-worthy numbers 4 years in a row, for 4 different teams: He batted .317 with 11 home runs and 93 RBIs for the 1926 Cardinals; .361, 26 and 125 for the 1927 Giants; a League-leading .387, 21 and 94 for the 1928 Boston Braves; and .380, 39 and 149 for the 1929 Chicago Cubs.
He did help the Cubs win Pennants in 1929 and 1932, but was in decline by the latter year. The Cardinals took him back in 1933, but quickly traded him to their Sportsman's Park landlords, the woeful St. Louis Browns, and he served as a player-manager until 1937, when he retired as a player. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1942.
His .358 lifetime batting average ranks 2nd all-time behind Ty Cobb, and tops all National League hitters and all righthanded hitters. His 301 home runs included 298 in NL play, which topped all NL players at the time of his retirement in 1937. His 2,085 hits were the most in the 1920s. He fell short of 3,000 career hits, though, finishing at 2,930.
Like later basketball star Bill Russell, he found it considerably harder to be a manager/head coach without himself as a contributing player. He was also a racist, and a compulsive gambler. Had the extent of his betting on horse racing been known at the time, he might have gotten banned from baseball.
But because he had lost so much money gambling, he had to stay employed in baseball, which wasn't easy. He was a player-manager for the Chattanooga Lookouts of the Southern Association in 1938, and the Baltimore Orioles of the International League in 1939. He went back to Texas, and got into the Texas League Playoffs managing the Oklahoma City Indians in 1940 and the Fort Worth Cats in 1942. Then the TL decided to suspend play for the duration of World War II.
He served as a Spring Training instructor for the Chicago White Sox and the Cleveland Indians. In 1949, he broadcast Cubs games on TV. In 1950, he went back to the Texas League, and led the Beaumont Roughnecks to the Pennant. In 1951, he won the Pacific Coast League Pennant with the Seattle Rainiers.
That got the majors' attention again. In 1952, Bill Veeck hired him to manage the Browns. It lasted 2 months, and when Veeck fired him, the Browns players gave him an engraved trophy to thank him. A few weeks later, the Cincinnati Reds hired him, but, frustrated, he resigned with 8 games left in the season. He coached for the Cubs.
In 1962, when no one else would hire him, his former Giant teammate Casey Stengel hired him as 3rd base coach for the expansion New York Mets. Rogers Hornsby coached that season, and was expecting to be brought back for the next season, when he died on January 5, 1963, in Chicago, of a heart attack. He was 66 years old.
Helped tremendously by a change of scenery, teammates and bosses, Frisch helped the Cardinals win Pennants in 1928, '30, '31 and, as player-manager of a team that became known as the Gashouse Gang, '34. So he was a member 8 Pennant winners, and 4 World Series winners.
He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1947, and became a broadcaster, first for the Giants, then for CBS and its Game of the Week. He became known for moaning about walks: "Oh, those bases on balls!"
As a member of the Hall of Fame's Committee on Veterans, he was known for lobbying for the election of his former Giant and Cardinal teammates, which many later fans have suggested were undeserving. The term "The Frisch Five" was coined, although there is not consensus on who the 5 players are. From the Giants, they have included George "High Pockets" Kelly, Ross Youngs, Dave Bancroft, Travis Jackson and Freddie Lindstrom. From the Cardinals, they have included Jim Bottomley, Chick Hafey, Jesse Haines and Burleigh Grimes.
Frankie Frisch died on March 12, 1973, at the age of 75, at a hospital in Wilmington, Delaware, from injuries sustained in a car crash in nearby Elkton, Maryland.
In 1949, Ogden Nash, my grandmother's favorite poet, even though he was a Giant fan and she was a Brooklyn Dodger fan, wrote "Line-Up for Yesterday" for Sport magazine, an alphabetical list of star players. For the letter F, he wrote:
F is
for Fordham
And Frankie and Frisch;
I wish he were back
With the Giants, I wish.
And for H:
H is
for Hornsby;
When pitching to Rog,
The pitcher would pitch,
Then the pitcher would dodge.
*
December 20, 1926 was a Monday. Baseball and football were out of season. The NBA hadn't yet been founded. One game was played in the NHL, and what would eventually be called "the old Madison Square Garden," but was then new: The New York Americans beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 2-0.
