THEY CALLED HIM HOME RUN BAKER
"'Home Run' Baker they called him. He first glamorized the home run. He worked the third base corner of the famous $100,000 infield, representing the Philadelphia Athletics and including Jack Barry, Eddie Collins and Stuffy McInnis.
His name is etched in bronze in baseball's Hall of Fame. He has now seen 72 summers come and go. Every morning he's up at 6 a.m. and, as when he was a boy, he spends the day in the fields tilling the ground and working his farm near Trappe, Maryland.
A remarkable man in physique, in age, in mind and in heart. Long on character, modesty and sincerity.
'It was just 50 years ago, this past September, about the 18th or the 20th, that I arrived in Chicago from the Reading club to join Connie Mack and the Athletics,' he says with a smile. 'I went into the Lexington Hotel and walked right in the dining room where Connie Mack was eating.
'I said, 'I'm here, Mr. Mack.' And Connie looked at me and said, 'I see you are.' That afternoon I went to the park and who was warming up but Big Ed Walsh. He could break a spitball into a bucket from the mound. I fouled off a pitch, he threw me a ball and then I doubled over Fielder Jones' head in right field.'
That was the beginning of John Franklin Baker's 13-year career in the American League. He got another double over Jones' head in the same game. In the 1911 World Series, he hit home runs off Rube Marquard and Christy Mathewson and became an American idol.
It was then that they started referring to him as 'Home Run' Baker. He was in an era of the dead ball. 'I don't like to cast aspersions,' he says, 'but a Little Leaguer today can hit the modern ball as far as grown men could hit the ball we played with.'
Baker also had to swing at the spitter, the emery ball and paraffin ball- all doctored pitches which are outlawed today. 'Russ Ford of the Yankees had the emery ball down perfect. He had a hole in his glove with a little piece of emery hidden in the padding,' Baker readily recalls.
'One day Eddie Collins took three strikes and then complained. Tom Connolly was the umpire. He went out, inspected the glove and found the emery cloth.'
Pitchers in Baker's day also threw at hitters. Carl Mays accidentally killed a man, Ray Chapman, on August 17, 1920. Even Walter Johnson, a noble individual, once aimed at an opposing player. Baker was his target.
'I was told that Walter Johnson on his deathbed said I was the only man he ever threw at deliberately. I remember it. I fell to the ground twice on two straight pitches. Gabby Street was the catcher. He was laughing. He asked me why did I duck.
'I looked at him and said it was either 'duck or no dinner.' I used to have luck hitting Walter. It was only hearsay, but I heard that his teammates kept after him to throw at me. Not many pitchers in my time threw at hitters and not many do it today, either. There's just no place in baseball for something like that.'
While Baker took his living room guest down memory lane, he got up and went to a closet for some old equipment. He had autographed balls which were 40 years old, his original gloves and bats which Tris Speaker, Babe Ruth and he himself had used.
'I showed this glove to Joe DiMaggio at an Old Timers' Game in New York. He couldn't believe it. He said, 'No man alive has a right to make a catch in anything like this.' But we did and you can see that we had to catch the ball in the pocket because the fingers aren't tied together and there is no webbing.
'I remember in 1908 we used to carry our uniforms to the field in a roll. That was when all the players went to the park in a horse-drawn streetcar. The next year we had trunks for our uniforms. Really, the uniform hasn't changed too much. The caps are different. It used to be more of a skullcap. Today they have long peaks on them.'
Baker was asked how he had discovered Jimmie Foxx, another Maryland member of the Hall of Fame. 'It was in this very room,' he answered. 'Foxx's father brought the boy to see me when I managed the Easton team in 1924. I signed him. His first two swings in spring training, when we practiced up by the old schoolhouse, were over the outfielders' heads.
'That same year I sold him to the majors. I loved Connie Mack. But I didn't think it was fair to offer him to only one team. I waited until the Yankees came to Philadelphia. I went down in the dugout and Ruth and manager Miller Huggins were talking. I told them about Foxx and said he could be playing on their team next year. They laughed. Huggins said he wasn't interested.
'Then I walked over to the A's dugout and saw Mr. Mack. I told him the same. He said, 'I'll take him.' He gave us $2,500. The next year Jimmie was with the A's. He made the jump all the way from Class D. I got a letter in the draw in the other room from Mr. Mack which he later wrote and told me, 'Foxx is all you said he was and more.' '
Baker was asked to demonstrate his position at the plate. He obliged. He had an old bat in his hand which had been a gift from Cy Young.
With his feet about 18 inches apart and his stance closed, 'Home Run' Baker probably didn't look much different than he did 50 years ago.
'I hope I never do anything to hurt baseball,' he said with a sudden grimness to his voice. The words seemed to come from the depths of his soul. 'Home Run' Baker hurt baseball? Not in half a century. Not in a lifetime. It could never happen."
John F. Steadman, Baltimore News-Post, (Baseball Digest, December 1958-January 1959)
