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This article appeared on a handout that I gave to my audience at the Detroit chapter of the Incorporated Society of Irish American Lawyers on January 14, 2010.   My talk was based on my latest book, The Irish in Baseball: An Early History (2009).  Click on the title to see it on Amazon.com.

Comments? Send e-mail to dfleitz@wowway.com.

The Irish in Baseball

 By David L. Fleitz

The Irish potato famine of the 1840s and 1850s was probably the greatest human tragedy of the 19th century.  The famine sparked a massive wave of emigration to America, with more than two million Irish men, women, and children leaving their homeland for the New World.  Their presence on American shores added a distinctive Irish flavor to the so-called “melting pot,” as Irish immigrants raised families, built communities, and made a place for themselves in their adopted country.

Hundreds of thousands of these Irish immigrants were young men, and their arrival created a potential new source of participants for America's most rapidly growing sport. Baseball was an activity that the immigrant Irishman could engage in to become part of his adopted country.  Through it, the Irishman could fit in and excel at something distinctly American.  While the older generation could not always understand this strange new pastime and its appeal, their young men embraced it with enthusiasm. 

Professional baseball, which took root in America shortly after the Civil War, was attractive to the ambitious Irishman.  It matured just as a new generation of Irish-Americans – the children of the famine refugees – reached adulthood, and it did not take long for the Irish to gain a foothold in the increasingly popular sport.  By 1885, according to statistics compiled by Hall of Fame historian Lee Allen, more than 40 percent of all major league players claimed Irish ancestry. 

Several of the earliest stars of the game were Irish-born, including pitchers Tommy Bond (who led the Boston Red Stockings to pennants in 1877 and 1878) and Tony Mullane, a 285-game winner.  Another well-known Irish-born player was Hugh (One-Arm) Daily, who lost his left hand in an accident as a youth but was one of the leading strikeout pitchers of his day.  

However, the second-generation Irishmen, those whose parents had fled the island and settled in the New World, left the greatest mark on the game.  One was Jim O’Rourke, an outfielder who, so the story goes, was offered a job with the Boston Red Stockings in 1873 on the condition that he remove the “O” from his last name, to make it seem less obviously Irish.  O’Rourke, proud of his heritage, refused.  “I would rather die than give up any part of my father’s name,” he declared.  “A million would not tempt me.”  The Boston club signed him anyway, and by the end of the decade the Red Stockings were a largely Irish team.  

The brightest star of the era was Mike Kelly, who earned the nickname “King of Ballplayers” with the powerful Chicago White Stockings of the 1880s.  Kelly played many positions, seeing time as a catcher, shortstop, and outfielder, and was a fine hitter, but his colorful personality made him baseball’s first true national celebrity.  He had little regard for training rules; he smoked on the bench during games, and when asked if he drank as well, he replied, “It depends on the length of the game.”  Kelly knew that the sole umpire on the field could not watch him every minute, so he often ran from second to home without bothering to touch third.  Often, he did not come within 30 feet of third base if the umpire’s back was turned.  If he dropped a fly ball, he would smile at his fuming manager and chirp in his Irish brogue, “Well, I made it hit me glove, anyhow.”  Kelly led the White Stockings to five pennants but eventually wore out his welcome in Chicago, and was sold to Boston in 1887 for $10,000, a record amount at the time.  

By the 1890s, Irish players had gained a reputation for braininess and guile.  More than half of the field managers and captains of National League teams claimed Irish descent, men with names like McGraw, Mack, Duffy, and Comiskey.  As Bill Joyce, an Irishman who managed the New York Giants, once put it, “Give me a good Irish infield, and I will show you a good team.  I don’t mean that it is necessary to have them all Irish, but you want two or three quick-thinking sons of Celt to keep the Germans and others moving.  

“Now you take a German,” continued Joyce, “you can tell him what to do and he will do it.  Take an Irishman and tell him what to do, and he is liable to give you an argument.  He has his own ideas.  So I have figured it out this way.  Get an Irishman to do the scheming.  Let him tell the Germans what to do and then you will have a great combination.”  

Several teams of the 1890s, including the three-time National League champion Baltimore Orioles, were almost totally Irish.  More importantly, some of the star players of this era made their mark as managers for decades to come.  John McGraw, son of a farmer from County Tipperary, was the field leader of the Orioles before he took over as manager of the New York Giants in 1902.  He won 10 pennants and three World Series in a tenure that lasted for more than 30 years.   

Even more impressive is the career of Connie Mack, whose real name was Cornelius McGillicuddy.  Born in 1862, this son of a Scottish mother and a father from County Kerry caught for several teams during the 1880s, managed the Pittsburgh Pirates during the 1890s, and became manager of the Philadelphia Athletics in 1901.  He finally retired from that post in 1950 after an astounding 50-year career in which he won nine pennants and five World Series titles.  

Though the ranks of managers (and umpires as well) remained heavily Irish for several decades of the new century, the Irish content of major league playing rosters began to diminish after 1900.  Before long, the Irish were only one of many ethnic groups competing on the major league level.  Still, their influence was keenly felt, and while no Irish-born player has gained election to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, more than two dozen Irishmen of the second generation have earned plaques on the wall in the baseball museum.  Today, baseball is slowly taking root in Ireland , the ancestral home of many of the game’s greatest stars, and perhaps the 21^st century will see the Irish reclaim a foothold in America’s national pastime.  

John McGraw (Giants) and Connie Mack (Athletics), shaking hands before the 1913 World Series.  During the 1910s, a majority of major league managers claimed Irish descent.

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David L. Fleitz, a systems analyst and baseball writer from Royal Oak, Michigan, has authored six books.  His latest is The Irish in Baseball: An Early History, which was released by McFarland in May of 2009.