Yankee4Life

Lena Blackburne Always hustling and full of pep, Russell “Lena” Blackburne was a superb defensive infielder from 1908 to 1926. Though a solid hitter in the minors, he struggled to hit major-league pitching. After his playing career ended, he served for three decades as a coach, manager, and scout. He is perhaps best known for a unique contribution he made to the game: supplying a muddy concoction for removing the slippery sheen from new baseballs. Connie Mack, manager of the Philadelphia Athletics, signed Blackburne in the fall of 1907 and farmed him out to the 1908 Worcester, Massachusetts, team of the Class B New England League. Blackburne was a right-handed batter and thrower. He was quite lanky at 5-feet-11 and 160 pounds, and was called Leaner, Slivers, and Slats by Jesse Burkett, the Worcester manager. The nickname “Leaner” was repeated by Worcester fans with a New England accent and became “Lena,” a sobriquet that would stick with Blackburne for the rest of his life. In 1912 Blackburne lost out to Buck Weaver, a 21-year-old rookie, for the shortstop position on the White Sox and was traded on August 9 to the Milwaukee Brewers for Ray Schalk, a 19-year-old catcher who would go on to have a Hall of Fame career for the Sox. Hugh Duffy managed the 1912 Brewers, and he was glad to give his former player another chance. Blackburne responded by batting .286 in 31 games. The next year, with Harry “Pep” Clark as manager, the Brewers won their first American Association pennant. Blackburne hit .264 in 165 games for the 1913 Brewers. The White Sox reacquired Blackburne in 1914 and moved him to second base, alongside Weaver at short. Blackburne quickly adapted to the new position. He led American League second basemen in assists, and his .963 fielding percentage ranked second at the position, behind only the .970 rate achieved by Philadelphia’s Eddie Collins, the league MVP. Blackburne’s .222 batting average was underwhelming, but he contributed in other ways. He led the White Sox with 66 walks and stole the second most bases on the club with 25, and his 31 sacrifice hits were tied for fourth most in the league. In the offseason, the White Sox acquired the great second baseman, Eddie Collins, from the Athletics, so Blackburne moved to third base in 1915. With Jack Fournier at first base, Eddie Collins at second, Buck Weaver at short, and Blackburne at third, the White Sox infield was regarded as one of the finest in baseball. Pitcher Red Faber, who won 24 games for the team, certainly appreciated them. Years later, he said, “Buck Weaver and Lena Blackburne were two I knew who never wanted to leave the field, not even in practice.” But after Blackburne hit only .216 in 1915, the White Sox sold his contract to the Toronto Maple Leafs of the International League. Blackburne led International League third basemen in fielding percentage in 1916 and 1917, and his batting average was respectable both seasons: .279 in 1916 and .266 the following year. The 1918 Reds were managed by Christy Mathewson. Blackburne became the team’s shortstop and again excelled in the field, leading the National League in double plays by a shortstop (72) and recording the second highest fielding percentage at the position (.938). On July 25, in the second game of a doubleheader at Boston, Blackburne teamed with Reds first baseman Hal Chase on a triple play. In the offseason, Blackburne worked at a New York shipyard at the tail end of World War I. In 1919 he played third base for the Braves and Philadelphia Phillies, but he hit only .199 for the Phillies, and the team sold his contract to the Toronto Maple Leafs in February of 1920. For the next two seasons, Blackburne played for the last-place Little Rock Travelers of the Southern Association, and he managed the team in 1925. That year he discovered Bill Dickey, a future Hall of Famer, who at the time was an 18-year-old catcher. In a semipro game, Dickey fielded a bunt and rifled a throw to first base that struck the right-field fence on one bounce. “Lena knew he had seen one of the greatest throwing arms in baseball and he wasted no time in signing Dickey to a Little Rock contract.” He joined Connie Mack’s staff in 1933, and served for many years as a coach of the Philadelphia Athletics. He also scouted for the Athletics and managed several of their minor-league affiliates, including the 1944 and 1945 Lancaster (Pennsylvania) Red Roses, who won consecutive Interstate League championships. Teenage Nellie Fox was a member of those Lancaster teams and benefited from Blackburne’s mentoring. In the late 1930s, umpire Harry Geisel complained to Blackburne about the difficulty in removing the slickness from new baseballs, which was one of the duties of umpires before a game. The glossy sheen on a new ball makes it hard to get a good grip on it. Blackburne solved the problem. He dug up some mud at low tide from the bottom of Pennsauken Creek near his Palmyra home. He filtered the mud to remove any stones, and he added a secret ingredient that gave it the consistency of cold cream and prevented it from staining the ball. When rubbed on a new baseball, the muddy concoction worked like magic, removing the slippery sheen without discoloring the ball. Soon teams in major and minor leagues were purchasing cans of Blackburne’s “rubbing mud.” He shared the money he earned with his wife, who jokingly referred to it as her “mud money.” Blackburne marketed his idea, and by 1938, he was supplying the mud to all American League teams; because Blackburne was a diehard American League fan, he refused to sell the mud to National League teams until the mid-1950s. Since then, every major and minor league team has used only his product. The mud is still collected today, from a new secret location. One container, a little more than 16 ounces, will usually last a season. Blackburne's contribution to the game has earned him a mention in the Baseball Hall Of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

10 out of 10, 49 seconds. Today was just as advertised: easy.

6 out of 10, 51 seconds. Click, click and click. I just guessed on a lot of them.

9 out of 10, 52 seconds. I am kicking myself for the one I missed.

7 out of 10, 47 seconds. Not a bad one today.

7 out of 10, 72 seconds. These were not easy today.

10 out of 10, 44 seconds. Starting 2023 right! Here are the top three point-scorers for December. 1. Y4L, 91 points 2. Fiebre, 86 points 3. Laroquece, 83 points. I won last month barely and I have a feeling that Fiebre will be doing everything he can to take back his first place standing.

10 out of 10, 42 seconds. This one was an easy one. Only one more for 2022!

4 out of 10, 45 seconds. I didn't know what I was doing.

9 out of 10, 59 seconds. There always has to be one that gets me.

7 out of 10, 61 seconds. Best score yet for intermediate questions.

8 out of 10, 68 seconds. It seems like every day I am missing stupid ones.

10 out of 10, 54 seconds. And Merry Christmas to all of us who play this game.

6 out of 10, 76 seconds. There were some puzzlers today.

6 out of 10, 48 seconds. I only knew two of them.

8 out of 10, 61 seconds. I don't know how I missed the Babe Ruth question.

6 out of 10, 36 seconds. With these kind of questions I just click-click-click and hope for the best.

6 out of 10, 70 seconds. I thought I did better but when I got my score I was really surprised.

10 out of 10, 45 seconds. The questions today made it very easy.

9 out of 10, 65 seconds. Not an easy one today.

10 out of 10, 49 seconds. That is more like it.

Tris Speaker Note: This photo was taken in September of 1920. The arm band that Speaker has on is in honor of shortstop Ray Chapman, who was killed by a pitched ball on August 17, 1920. Tris Speaker, Ty Cobb’s friendly rival as the greatest center fielder of the Deadball Era, could field and throw better than the Georgia Peach even if he could not quite match him as a hitter. Legendary for his short outfield play, Speaker led the American League in putouts seven times and in double plays six times in a 22-year career with Boston, Cleveland, Washington, and Philadelphia. Speaker’s career totals in both categories are still major-league records at his position. No slouch at the plate, Speaker had a lifetime batting average of .345, sixth on the all-time list, and no one has surpassed his career mark of 792 doubles. He was also one of the game’s most successful player-managers. “You can write him down as one of the two models of ball-playing grace,” Grantland Rice wrote of the Grey Eagle. “The other was Napoleon Lajoie. Neither ever wasted a motion or gave you any sign of extra effort. … They had the same elements that made a Bobby Jones or the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame — the smoothness of a summer wind.” A born right-hander, young Tris taught himself to throw left-handed when he twice broke his right arm after being thrown from a bronco. Soon he began to bat left-handed as well. In 1906 Speaker wrote several professional teams asking for a tryout and was signed by Cleburne of the Texas League for $50 per month. Tris bombed as a pitcher – he lost six straight games and once reportedly gave up 22 straight hits, all for extra bases – but as an outfielder he hit .268 and stole 33 bases in 84 games. When the North Texas League and South Texas League were consolidated in 1907, Speaker moved to Houston and hit a league-leading .314 with 36 steals in 118 games. The Boston Red Sox purchased Speaker’s contract at the end of the 1907 season. He appeared in seven games for the big club, but hit only .158. Unimpressed with his play, the Red Sox did not send Speaker a contract for 1908. Speaker twice begged John McGraw for a chance to play for the New York Giants, to no avail, and was also rebuffed by several other major-league clubs. Finally, Speaker paid his own way to Boston’s Little Rock training camp to work out with the Red Sox. At the end of spring training, the Red Sox turned his contract over to Little Rock of the Southern Association as payment for the rent of the training field. There was one stipulation: If Speaker developed, Boston had the right to repurchase him for $500. Well, he did. Speaker led the Southern Association in hitting in 1908 with a .350 average stole 28 bases, and drew raves for his outfield play. Despite interest from the Pittsburgh Pirates, Brooklyn Superbas, Washington Senators, and, at last, the Giants, the Travelers sold Speaker back to Boston. Speaker hit only .224 in 31 games for the Red Sox in 1909, but was flawless in the outfield. Speaker further honed his outfield skills by working with Red Sox pitcher Cy Young. “When I was a rookie,” Speaker later recalled, Young “used to hit me flies to sharpen my abilities to judge in advance the direction and distance of an outfield ball.” Speaker led Boston to world championships in two of the next seven seasons, 1912 and 1915, hitting above .300 every year and perennially ranking among American League leaders in most offensive and defensive categories. With teammates Harry Hooper and Duffy Lewis, Speaker formed one of the best fielding outfields in history. During this period Speaker led AL center fielders in putouts five times and in double plays four times. Twice he had 35 assists, the American League record. Relations between the Grey Eagle and team president Joe Lannin were also far from warm. After the Red Sox World Series victory in 1915, Lannin angered Speaker by proposing that the outfielder’s salary be cut from about $18,000 – higher at the time than that of Ty Cobb – to $9,000, since Speaker’s batting average had declined three years in a row. (Lannin had raised Speaker’s salary in 1914 to keep him from jumping to the Federal League’s Brooklyn Club, which had offered Speaker a three-year contract for $100,000 to be its player-manager). When Speaker held out, Lannin traded him to Cleveland for Sam Jones, Fred Thomas, and $55,000. Speaker received a massive outpouring of affection from the fans when he returned to Boston in a Cleveland uniform on May 9, 1916, and even mistakenly headed toward the Red Sox dugout at the end of one inning. Boston pitchers, meanwhile, complained that without Spoke in center, they could no longer groove fastballs when behind in the count, certain that he would catch everything hit his way. The Red Sox won the World Series again, but Speaker became the idol of Indians fans and hit even better with his new club than he had in Boston. In the outfield Speaker played so shallow that he was almost a fifth infielder. “At the crack of the bat he’d be off with his back to the infield,” said teammate Joe Wood, “and then he’d turn and glance over his shoulder at the last minute and catch the ball so easy it looked like there was nothing to it, nothing at all.” Twice in one month, April 1918, Speaker executed unassisted double plays at second base, catching low line drives on the run and then beating the baserunner to the bag. At least once in his career Speaker was the pivot man in a routine double play. As late as 1923, after the advent of the lively ball forced Speaker to play deeper, he still had 26 assists. He was a remarkably consistent batter. In 1912, Speaker set a major-league record with three separate hitting streaks of 20 or more games, while his 11 consecutive hits in 1920 set a mark that went unsurpassed for 18 years. Speaker’s major weakness as a batter was the slow, high, curve. Speaker spent 11 seasons with the Indians, compiling a batting mark that averaged over .350. He paced the American League in doubles four straight seasons. As late as 1925, the 37-year-old outfielder hit .389 in 117 games. The following year, his final season with Cleveland, he hit .304 in 150 games. As player-manager, Speaker piloted Cleveland to a 617-520 record (.543) between 1919 and 1926. The Indians club he took to the World Series in 1920 had been demoralized by the midseason death of shortstop Ray Chapman when he was beaned by Carl Mays. Speaker rallied the team and in the Series, Cleveland defeated Brooklyn five games to two. After the 1926 season, Hubert “Dutch” Leonard, a disgruntled former teammate, accused Speaker and Cobb of fixing a game in 1919. Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis cleared both men of the charges, but by that time American League President Ban Johnson, who believed the men guilty, had persuaded Cobb and Speaker to resign in order to protect baseball’s image. In February 1927, Speaker signed with the Washington Senators, where he hit .327. Speaker finished his major-league career with Cobb on Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics in 1928. He spent 1929 and 1930 as the player-manager of the Newark Bears in the International League, where he hit .355 and .419 in limited play. Speaker's major league playing career ended after 1928. He retired with 792 doubles, an all-time career record. Defensively, Speaker holds the all-time career records for assists as an outfielder and double plays as an outfielder. He remains the last batter to hit 200 triples in a career.

2 out of 10, 37 seconds. Um, can I have a do-over? 😲

9 out of 10, 67 seconds. A lot better than yesterday.

3 out of 10, 33 seconds. I got the first seven in a row wrong.