King Kelly - Controversy and Cheating

Controversy and Cheating

Kelly was an adept baserunner, leading the National League in runs scored three times and ranking among the league leaders in stolen bases.

His baserunning was legendary in other ways as well. His arguably most frequent brilliant play was always legitimate—a feetfirst hook slide to avoid being tagged. In 1889, Tim Murnane of the Boston Globe said nine times out of ten, Kelly will "throw himself out of the reach of the baseman, and catch the bag from the outside." Also, "Kelly is not a sprinter, but can get a great start, and this counts more than a fine slide, as a catcher is likely to be hurried when he sees the runner well on his way to a base."

Upon Kelly's death, former teammate Tom Brown said, "He originated the slide which I do now in base running, and which is very generally copied by many ball players. The scheme is to slide to the side and get out of the way of the baseman, and not dash into him in the old way. Owing to the success of Kelly's sliding the topical song was written."

Kelly also became famous for making unusual plays. He seems to have performed most just a few times and probably made a bigger mark with verbal trickery, while catcher or coacher at first or third base. Right after his death, his longtime captain-manager in Chicago, Cap Anson, said he was a "genius" as a coacher. Apparently referring to Kelly's ability to distract opposing fielders, Anson said, "Many a run has been scored through Kelly’s trickiness. He was a rattling all-around man, but his cleverest work was done behind the plate . He was full of tricks and was never so happy as when playing a practical joke." A year later, Anson said, "Mike Kelly was the prince of base runners. I've never seen a man equal to him in that line, and he could get away with more sharp tricks than any man who ever wore a baseball uniform."

Kelly's uniqueness was in making four attempts to cut bases, while the then-lone umpire wasn’t looking, in the apparent first prevalent year of the trick: 1881. A methodical study of trickery in early baseball found Kelly cutting bases just a few more times over the rest of his career, and none at other times through 1886, his last year with Chicago. From 1887 to 1893, four seems to be his number of cuts. One was a success. Twice he was called out. Once he went back after being spotted. From 1881 to 1893, the relevant years to compare, dozens of players cut bases.

In his day, a much more common tricky play was fouling off pitches to draw a walk. Until the first years of the twentieth century, batters were generally not charged with a strike for fouling off a pitch. Fouled-off bunts started counting as strikes in 1894, when Kelly's big league career was over.

Some of the wildest stories of his trickery were not reported contemporaneously by reporters. Perhaps the most famous play that has been wrongly credited to Kelly—at least as taking place during a game that mattered—is from around 1890. In his 1994 The Rules of Baseball, David Nemec relates the following "often-told Kelly tale" and is the rare writer to say it is either false or embellished. As cited in Rosenberg's definitive biography of Kelly, Cap Anson 2 (2004), a former teammate of Kelly, Charlie Bennett, said the following after Kelly’s death in 1894:

Supposedly, Kelly was not in the game when an opposing batter hit a foul fly. Seeing that catcher Charley Ganzel could not catch the ball, Kelly announced himself in and made the play. The story would have most likely been from 1889, 1891 or 1892, when Ganzel and Kelly were teammates. Bennett said, "During a game one day, sat on the bench and Ganzel was behind the bat . A foul fly was popped up, out of Ganzel’s reach, when quick as a flash `Kel’ ran forward, ordered Ganzel out of the game, caught the ball, and then ordered the umpire to declare the batter out. maintained with a great deal of force, that he had as much right to order Ganzel out of the game, while a ball was in the air, as at any other time during the progress of the game. However, the decision went against him."

Rosenberg did not find a contemporaneous account of Kelly having done that, and it is possible he did so in an exhibition game. The closest sounding story to the above appeared right after Kelly’s death, when John D. "Johnny" Foster of the Cleveland Leader wrote, "The nearest that he ever approached to downright malice in playing in Cleveland was during a game between Cleveland and Boston for the national championship when he called a Cleveland player's name as two men were running for a foul fly."