Selbach’s Bad Day!

On 23 June 1904, the New York Highlanders are in town to play the Senators, Jack Powell on the rubber for New York and Happy Townsend for Washington. Washington loses 7 to 4 to New York, the headline, “Selbach’s Record Will be Famous.”.[1] Selbach’s “famous record” takes place in the eighth inning of the game, when he makes three outfield errors in the inning. The paper adds, a wild throw to third that scored two men. He fumbled a grounder allowing one man to cross the plate, and he dropped a fly that gave still another man a chance to rest up on the bench.”

The paper continues, “If there is a cellar to the Hall of Fame, Kip Selbach should hunt up a secluded spot, behind the coal pit. His claim to distinction classes up with that of the man who bought the first gold brick or the man who first allowed his picture to be printed in connection with a patent medicine advertisement.”

“His feat of making three errors in left field in one inning, is about the limit for major league ball, and will be recounted to pratting babes by fan-fathers, in the years to come, as the rankest piece of garden work that ever made a crowd tired.”

Ban Johnson, reading about Selbach’s antics wires Manager Patsy Donovan to suspend Kip Selbach.  The game is Kip Selbach’s swan song with Washington.

On 4 July, Kip Selbach is traded to The Boston American League Club for outfielder Bill O’Neill. In writing about the new player the Washington Times states, “O’Neil is a young active player, who bats and fields fairly well, but is not a marvel in either respect. It is to be hoped that he will work hard all the time while here, and at least give the spectators a run for their money.”[2]

So there you have it, ball player quits on his team and is sent packing for whatever the team can get, or is it?

Ban Johnson first tries to trade Kip Selbach and Malachi Kittridge[3] to New York[4] for John Anderson. [5] This was a trade that originally had been planned for early in the year but vetoed by new manager Patsy Donovan.

“A proposed deal of Malachi Kittridge and Kip Selbach for John Anderson. Your correspondent[6] has very strong reason to believe that this offer was made. It is said that Griffith turned it down rather tartly, saying that he had made this deal once, and it had been broken up. It is said that the New Yorker has been very sore on the Senators since Manager Patsy Donovan queered the original Selbach deal, and declared with emphasis that he would never do anything for Washington again.”[7]

“It is said that when the New Yorks were here last Manager Griffith wanted the last game called early, merely as a matter of convenience, and not from any necessity in filling schedule dates.

Business Manager WJ Dwyer very properly refused to inconvenience the patrons or the game simply for the purpose of allowing the visitors’ to get home a little sooner, and this, it is stated, caused another declaration against Washington, and was soon followed by the refusal to make the very advantageous trade referred to.”[8]

So exit New York and hello Boston.

Patsy Dougherty had been on bad terms with Red Sox owner John I Taylor. So in June Taylor trades Dougherty from the Boston Americans to the New York Highlanders for Bob Unglaub.[9] William John “Bill” O’Neill takes the place of Patsy Dougherty. The press roasts the team for trading the popular Dougherty. The Boston management feels that the “agitation” over the Dougherty affair prevented O’Neill from playing for Boston.[10]  So Ban Johnson decided to pack Selbach off to Boston and get rid of O’Neill, problem solved.

Sporting Life writes,   “The Selbach deal was merely a gift of a very valuable player to a club that was already too strong, and the deprivation of a weak club of one of its few first class men.[11] Selbach has been the subject of trade talks for some time. One aspect of the trade will be a blow to the New York Club. Clark Griffith could easily have prevented Selbach’s going to Boston, and strengthened his own club as well; at least that is the information from a source which has almost always proved correct. But Grif, as the story is told, preferred to take out a causeless grudge against Washington, and it recoiled upon him, as such a course usually does.”

The reaction in Washington to selling a starter for a utility player is not good. “Maybe the deal looks good in the face of the specious promises which have been made for the past twelve months about strengthening the Washington team. If all the hot air Ban Johnson has expanded in telling about what he intended to do for Washington were gathered together in one city it would cause an epidemic of heat prostration. To show that he is strictly on the level in his voluble assertions he makes this latest deal.”[12]

“What did Washington get in the deal was outfielder O’Neill, and, presumably, some money? O’Neill is simply an unknown player, who may make good, as such new men do in about one case out of ten, and it is hoped he will; or he may not, and the indications, so far as his play with Boston is concerned, are that such will be the case. As the matter stands, Washington has lost one of its three or four hitters and New York has had its pennant chances weakened. Selbach is as good as ever, and there are only a few in his class, as he will show within a few days. The effect of the transaction upon local patronage will be bad, but there was not much left, anyway. There has never been so much interest in base ball in Washington as there is this year, and never so little in professional base ball. If everything is the be turned over to three or four clubs, so that half of the games may be played to empty seats, the circuit should be reduced to Boston, New York, Chicago and Philadelphia.”[13]