John Montgomery Ward was baseball’s most interesting man in the world
For baseball fans like me, the off-season is a time for reading, sometimes watching baseball movies and content, and thinking about the history of my favorite sport that once was referred to as ‘America’s Pastime’.
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When I think about things that happened pre-modern era, an era that my son Gordon refers to as ‘funny baseball’, my mental picture of the games back then is in black and white. For some reason I am unable to colorize it! Professional baseball has been nine guys on the field playing nine innings for more than 150 years. This makes comparing what happened in the 1880’s and 1890’s even more compelling and unlike any other sport. Or pastime.
As the United States was recovering from the Civil War, baseball was at the forefront of the American experience. When divisional play in MLB began in 1969, that season also celebrated the 100th anniversary of professional baseball. The 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings are acknowledged as baseball’s first professional team. They went 67–0 and won the ‘championship’. No, it wasn’t a fair fight since they were…pros! The National League would not be founded until 1876. I knew that much. But most of 19th century baseball is fuzzy and mostly unknown to me.
John Montgomery Ward (who had nothing to do with the defunct retail store of the same name, is a member of Baseball’s Hall of Fame. Unless you are a devoted fan, you’ve probably never heard of him. Gordon and I are always looking around for old-timey baseball players since we readily admit we don’t discuss them enough on our podcast. We both came upon JMW from different angles. Mine was that JMW was baseball’s first labor leader. Gordon looked at him as a baseball player.
in Baseball-Reference.com his playing career is under John Ward (how boring a name and how much better is adding the Montgomery?). Known as mostly as Johnny Ward, or sometimes ‘Monte’ he forged a 17-year MLB career from 1878–1894.
Bill Lamb on the SABR website has a detailed but not-too-long biography of John Montgomery Ward. The full bio can be read here but the excerpt below is compelling all by itself.
When he joined the Providence Grays in 1878, an 18-year-old Ward was the National League’s youngest player. During the 1880 season, he hurled the circuit’s second perfect game after having been the NL’s winningest pitcher the season before. When overuse and injury ruined his throwing arm, Ward, an exceptional athlete, transformed himself into a capable everyday player. He shortstopped the New York Giants to consecutive world championships in 1888–1889, and five years later led the Giants to a postseason Temple Cup triumph as player-manager. Nor did Ward abandon baseball after his retirement from playing in 1894. During his later years, he stood as a controversial candidate for the National League presidency; was club president and part-owner of the Boston Braves; and served in the front office of the Brooklyn franchise in the upstart Federal League.
As impressive as these achievements are, they are nonetheless overshadowed by Ward’s contributions to the game as a trailblazer. Intelligent, well educated, and dynamic, Ward organized the first major-league players union in 1885 and was a tireless advocate for players’ rights. He also authored the first popular How-To manual for youngsters wishing to take up the game. But first and foremost, Ward is remembered as the driving force behind the employee-controlled Players League, the audacious but short-lived challenger to the preeminence of the National League and American Association. Apart from all this, he also took an active role in the social and civic life of greater Gotham. At various times, Ward was a high-visibility Broadway bon vivant, a distinguished New York City attorney, a Long Island country squire and community pillar, and a major figure in Northeastern amateur golfing circles. Although there are other worthy contenders for the laurel, John Montgomery Ward may well have been the most accomplished man ever to play major-league baseball. And when it finally came in 1964, his posthumous induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame was both well-deserved and long overdue.
I just finished JMW’s own book “Base-Ball: How to Become a Player, with the Origin, History and Explanation of the Gamel” written in the mid-late 1880s. It was concise, excellent, and surprising in its being quite up-to-date even today, for descriptions of the various positions on the field and their responsibilities. The rules of baseball are much the same today as they were in the 1880s but not entirely. For one thing, the pitcher stood only 50 feet from home plate in the pitcher’s box and overhand pitching was only first allowed in 1884.
In one of my favorite sections — baserunning, Ward notes:
“Before the enactment of the rule confining the coachers to a limited space the coacher at third base sometimes played a sharp trick on the second baseman. When the catcher threw the ball, the coacher started down the base-line toward home, and the second baseman, seeing only imperfectly, mistook him for the runner and returned the ball quickly to the catcher. The result was that the runner from first trotted safely to second, the runner at third remained there, and everybody laughed except the second baseman.”
That the third base coach would feign that he himself was heading home to score is marvelous and ridiculous! I think getting rid of the coaches box is something that should be revisited!
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It’s JMW’s diverse and often incredible life that fascinates me the most, that and finding out his being a country squire, and if you haven’t guessed I, we, since my son is also enamored, will be doing a longer form podcast series on baseball’s most interesting man in the world! And chances are I will be writing about him again as well.
Thanks for reading!
About the Author: Mark Kolier along with his son Gordon co-hosts a baseball podcast called ‘Almost Cooperstown’. He also has written baseball-related articles that can be accessed on Medium.com and Substack.com.
