Things I've Learned About Baseball While Writing This Blog

Some Interesting Things I've Learned While Writing This Blog

As I wrap things up at Depression Era Baseball, I thought I'd just list a few things I've discovered while playing this replay and researching the era in general (in no particular order):

1. While we tend to believe that player mobility is mostly a product of free agency, and that "in the good old days" most players stayed with one team, this doesn't seem to be true. While conducting my 1934 replay, I also replayed 1931. A great many players were on other teams only three years earlier. This didn't include only journeymen, but truly great players like Rogers Hornsby, Chick Hafey, Chuck Klein and Stan Hack.

2. Baseball players did not "work out" in the 1930s, or seek to develop their physique. At the time, it was thought to be detrimental to their flexibility, which was thought to be more important in a baseball player. This seems to be the mentality in Japan. New Royals' skipper Trey Hillman will reportedly use flexibility training as a way of improving his team's conditioning for 2008.

3. Boy, the Cubs had some great teams in the 1930s. They never won the World Series, so we don't hear much about them, but they won 3 pennants and finished out of the top 3 only 1 time in the decade.

4. The 1930s was the era of nicknames - the weird players were the ones that didn't have one.

5. The public persona of Dizzy Dean was highly misleading and a deliberate distortion of a man who realized he needed a "character" to sell himself. In public, he was a colorful country rube, who couldn't pronounce the King's English and couldn't care less. In private, though, he was a well spoken, refined family man and friend.

6. The 1930s teemed with great players, many of whom we are familiar. Many others, however, such as Lon Warneke, Chuck Klein, and Red Ruffing deserve to be much better known. Part of the problem is that there aren't a lot of books on the era. A new, comprehensive treatment of baseball during this era is definitely needed.

7. In response to the Yankees' dominance at the end of the decade, the AL adopted a rule prohibiting other teams from trading with the league champion of the previous year. The champion was only allowed to pick up player off waivers. This rule prompted NL executive Branch Rickey to remark, "They've gone communistic in that league. The rule was repealed at the All Star break in 1941 when it was clear that, without Hank Greenberg, the reigning AL champion Detroit Tigers didn't pose a threat to anyone.

8. The Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) has a fascinating biography project underway.