Good Luck, Derek Shelton, May Fred Clarke’s Spirit Guide You

With the 2020 baseball season finally beginning, although unrecognizably, nine new managers will assume the helms of their respective teams.

Six pilots are familiar faces: Joe Maddon goes from the Chicago Cubs to the Los Angeles Angels; Joe Girardi from the New York Yankees to the Philadelphia Phillies; Gabe Kapler from the Phillies to the San Francisco Giants; Ron Roenicke upgraded from the Boston Red Sox bench coach to Interim Manager; Mike Matheny from the St. Louis Cardinals to the Kansas City Royals, and Dusty Baker will join the Houston Astros, his fifth managerial post. The three newbies are Jayce Tingler, San Diego Padres; Luis Rojas, New York Mets, and Derek Shelton, Pittsburgh Pirates, the franchise’s 30th manager since 1900. Shelton hopes to guide the Bucs back to respectability and, eventually, to the post-season.

If Shelton has a mere fraction of the success that Pirates’ Hall of Fame player-manager Fred Clarke enjoyed during his initial 1900 season, fans will be delighted. Other Pirates’ HOF managers Honus Wagner, Pie Traynor and Frankie Frisch are more well-known, but none matched Clarke’s .595 winning percentage, an all-time Bucco high.

Under the 27-year-old Clarke’s stewardship, the Pirates appeared in the 1903 and 1909 World Series, losing the former against the Boston Americans, but defeating the Detroit Tigers in the latter. Clarke, the player, excelled. As New York Giants’ superstar, 373-game winner Christy Mathewson, one of the Hall of Fame’s first five inductees, wrote in his autobiography, Pitching in a Pinch, “Clarke is a hard man for me to fool.”

During his 21-year career, exclusively with the Pirates and the American Association’s Louisville Colonels, a late 19th century professional team, Clarke hit .312, and patrolled left field skillfully. As a defender, Clarke took chances, and dove for sinking line drives that resulted in spectacular catches. To offset his one outfield weakness – going backward to catch fly balls soaring over his head – Clarke played a deep left field, allowing his speed and agility to guide him in any direction. Defensively, Clarke shone, leading the National League twice in fielding percentage and in putouts, once.

On the base paths, Clarke terrorized infielders. He used his arms and legs to knock balls out of their gloves, broke up double plays without regard for personal safety, and fearlessly duked it out with opponents who dared to challenge him. Veteran sports journalist Fred Lieb, who covered baseball for 70 years and is a member of the Hall of Fame writers’ wing, wrote in his 1960 The Sporting News obituary that, “With the possible exception of Cobb and John McGraw, baseball never knew a sturdier competitor than Clarke.”

Fate denied Clarke’s outstanding 1902 team a third shot at the post-season classic. That year, the Pirates racked up an astonishing 103-36 record, a second best-ever .741 winning percentage just behind the 1906 Chicago Cubs’ .763. But because of an intense feud between the American and the National Leagues, no World Series was played in 1902. The Pirates’ match up against the American League’s Philadelphia A’s would have been one for the ages. The A’s ace hurlers Eddie Plank and Rube Waddell against the Corsairs’ batting phenoms Wagner and Ginger Beaumont, the 1902 batting leader with his .357 average, would have delighted Pittsburgh and Philadelphia fans.

Clarke’s managerial tenure lasted until 1915. During his 16 years as Bucco skipper, Clarke matched wits with acknowledged baseball masterminds like the New York Giants’ McGraw and the Cubs’ Frank Chance. Then, in September 1915, with the Pirates’ fortunes waning, a decline that coincided with Wagner’s fading offensive production, Clarke resigned. But, ten years later, owner Barney Dreyfuss brought Clarke back to serve in an advisory capacity to then-manager Bill MacKenzie.

Seated on the bench in street clothes, Clarke’s in-game advice helped lead the Pirates to a winning 1925 World Series effort against the Washington Senators and 407-game winner Walter Johnson who, like Mathewson, was a first Hall of Fame inductee. But by 1926, the third-place Pirates were under-performing. Chaos reigned on the field and in the front office. Worn out by the conflict with MacKenzie over tactics, Clarke resigned.

In addition to his managerial and playing talents, Clarke was also an entrepreneur whose patented baseball-related inventions like flip-down sunglasses and sliding pads earned him millions. And when Clarke discovered oil on his Kansas ranch, his wealth, already substantial, multiplied to a value in today’s dollars that exceeded $90 million.

About Clarke, whose name has faded over the century-plus since he last sat on the Pirates’ bench, this can be safely written: he’s one of the few baseball greats who could have reached the Hall of Fame as either a manager or a player.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers Association of America member. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.