The University of Michigan

by Wilfred Byron Shaw

In 1867 the Club was groomed for the championship of the State; student subscriptions were solicited; class nines were formed to give them sufficient practice, and the dignity of white uniforms was at last attained. Finally the team, accompanied by seventy supporters,—it was long before the day of "rooters,"—traveled to Detroit and met the Detroit Champions. The game lasted three hours and a half, included six home runs, and was won by the University with the wholly satisfactory score of 70 to 18, Detroit being unable to hit Blackburn the University pitcher sufficiently, though, judged by modern standards, his record was not exactly a "shut-out." A return game, however, played in the fall resulted in the defeat of the University 36 to 20, while the final game of the series, a year later, ran to eleven innings with the University finally winning 26 to 24. Soon after this the Detroit team disbanded and for some years baseball languished in the University; partly because of the lack of opponents for so redoubtable a nine, and partly because the first enthusiasm for the game had waned. Interest revived somewhat in 1873, but aside from inter-class games the only available opponents were mostly professional clubs from the neighboring towns, who were ordinarily outclassed by the college men. With the abolition of the old straight-arm pitching in 1875 and the calling of strikes established, the extravagant scores began to be materially reduced.

Michigan's first inter-collegiate baseball game was with Wisconsin on May 20, 1882. It was played at Ann Arbor and resulted in a victory 20 to 8. This game came as a result of the formation of an Inter-collegiate Baseball League, composed of Michigan, Wisconsin, Northwestern and Racine, in which the Varsity easily won the championship. Unsatisfactory arrangements for the traveling expenses of the team, however, caused Michigan to withdraw from the League the next year and the nine was forced once more to fall back upon the professional and semi-professional teams in neighboring cities. Oberlin appeared upon the schedule in 1886 and Michigan Agricultural College twice defeated the Varsity the following year. But if these years saw no remarkable schedules, the team was, nevertheless, steadily improving. The fielding average of the '88 team was .908; and though less can be said of the batting, two members, McDonnell, '88, and McMillan, '86-'89, had averages of .448 and .406 respectively. The Chronicle also was jubilant over the financial success of the '88 season which left a surplus of $50 in the treasury, after "elegant new suits" had been purchased.

Confidence in the ability of the team led to the first Eastern trip in 1890, which resulted in a close and exciting 2 to 1 victory over Cornell at Ithaca, May 16. From this time on Cornell and other Eastern colleges appeared with fair regularity in the schedule. Games with Harvard and Yale were arranged in 1891, and every candidate was pledged to strict training after February first under Peter Conway, a famous National League pitcher. The trip resulted in a creditable record; and although the game with Yale was lost 2 to 0, only three hits were scored off the pitcher, Codd, '91, a record for the Varsity almost as welcome as a victory. The game with Harvard, won 4 to 3, was peculiarly satisfying to the tired team, which had already played six games, and had had, in the words of Captain Codd, "as hard a course of training as any University team had, up to that time, ever undergone.... We had given our Eastern antagonists a pretty good 'practice game,'" (the Harvard manager's term). Conditions were reversed the following year when Yale was defeated 3 to 2, but Harvard won 4 to 2. Michigan returned to her Western rivals in 1893 and was almost uniformly successful for several years.

An Eastern trip in 1894 was less fortunate, for it resulted in an unbroken series of defeats from Vermont, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, and Cornell. The spell with Cornell was broken, however, in 1895, when Michigan won a decided victory 11 to 0, at Detroit, and had some revenge for previous defeats. E.C. Shields, '94, '96l, center field and captain of the team that year, has described the winning of this game as the "most satisfactory moment" of his athletic career; the team was the best Michigan had ever had, and the game after the first few innings became a successful struggle on the part of the pitcher, Sexton, '98m, and his team-mates to make it a "shut-out." Since that day Michigan has more than broken even in her games with Cornell.

Baseball at this time was genuinely popular; all of the classes in the Literary Department as well as many in the professional schools had their own teams, which not only gave the Varsity good practice but played in a league among themselves, while the fraternities also had a league of some years' standing. This popularity of the national game was soon to pass, however, with the increasing vogue of football, and it has never regained the pre-eminent place it held in student favor during the period which ended in 1900, though, it has always had many enthusiastic followers.

The year '99 saw an especially strong team, which not only was successful in the West but at least divided honors on the first Eastern trip of some years. Particularly spectacular was the final game with Illinois which won the championship. Michigan had already won two out of three games, but with a victory in the last of the series Illinois saw a chance to claim the Western honors. In the sixth inning Illinois had men on second and third and no one out. Guy Miller, '98, '00l, otherwise known as "Sox," was put in as pitcher, and though he had won a hard game the day before, he struck out the next two batters. The last man was put out easily, and Miller held the rest of the game safely, with a final score of 4 to 2.

Two fairly successful years followed, marked, however, by a uniformly disastrous Eastern trip in 1901. Then followed in 1902 "the most unsuccessful baseball season in years," though the end came with a victory over Cornell, 7 to 4, largely through the efforts of Michigan's greatest all-round athlete, Neil Snow, '02, in the last contest of his athletic career. He was responsible for six of the seven runs, bringing in three men with one three-base hit, while he himself managed to score on a poor throw.

A final defeat from Illinois the following year just missed the championship of the West for Michigan. It is worthy of mention that it was at this game, on which many undergraduate hopes were centered, that the custom of singing "The Yellow and the Blue" in defeat as well as in victory was inaugurated. The Western championship rested with Michigan in 1905 and again in 1906, but this was destined to be the last time for many years. Much of the success of these two teams was due to Frank Sanger, '07l, who was considered the best college pitcher in the West.

With 1907 begins another story. Michigan was now out of the Conference and there began a progressive decline in interest in baseball. Many small colleges soon appeared on the schedules, and in 1908 the South began to figure prominently in the earlier season games. A few games with Eastern colleges relieved the monotony, but the results were far from being always satisfactory. Two interesting games with the Japanese students of Keio University ended the season of 1911. While the University won both games with scores of 20 to 5 and 3 to 1, they demonstrated how apt the Oriental has been in picking up the fine points of the great American game. Some amends for an unsuccessful season were made on June 26, 1912 by a thrilling 2 to 1 victory over Pennsylvania before the thousands of guests and alumni who had gathered to celebrate the University's Seventy-Fifth Anniversary.

The painstaking efforts of Branch Rickey, who had been coach of the team since 1910, and later became manager of the St. Louis American League team, began to show results in 1913. The following year Michigan, in spite of no significant Western games, had some justification for claiming the national championship through victories in two series of games with Cornell and Pennsylvania, the acknowledged leaders of the East. This record was due in no small part to the prowess of one player, George Sisler, '15e, who, from his first season in 1913, showed the extraordinary ability that made him not only Michigan's greatest baseball player but one of the best all-round players in the history of the game. While in the University he alternated as pitcher and left fielder and was captain of the team in 1914. This was the year Carl Lundgren began his successful career as baseball coach. An unexpected weakness in critical games and an unfortunate discussion over professionalism were probably the reasons for the poor success in 1915 of what was essentially an unusually competent team, while a nine composed almost entirely of inexperienced players counted heavily against the 1916 record.