Great items from our Sam Rice master collector. Thanks for posting Val.
Player #74I: Edgar C. "Sam" Rice Part 2. Outfielder for the Washington Senators in 1915-1933. 2,987 hits and 34 home runs in 20 MLB seasons. 1924 World Series champion. 1920 AL stolen base leader. He was inducted into the MLB Hall of Fame in 1963. Led the Senators to three AL pennants (1924,1925, and 1933). Best known for controversial "over the fence" catch in the 1925 World Series. He had many excellent seasons, but one of his best was 1930 as he posted a .407 OBP with 121 runs scored in 669 plate appearances. He had 63 stolen bases in 1920. He last played in 1934 with the Cleveland Indians. His early life was marred by tragedy when his wife, two daughters, parents, and two sisters were all killed by a tornado in Indiana.
. . . A few baseball old-schoolers, led by Griffith and John McGraw, were opposed to players participating in the hobby (playing golf) during the baseball season. McGraw didn't even want his players to speak of golf once the baseball season began. . . .
. . . Following the lead of Griffith and McGraw, Yankees manager Miller Huggins instituted a golf ban of his own a few weeks before the beginning of spring training (in 1924). Detroit manager Ty Cobb actually went so far as to confiscate the clubs of his golf-playing Tigers. The reasoning given by the developing unified front was that golf, particularly when played on the morning before a baseball game, was an energy drain on players. . . .
. . . Tension between the two sports wasn't limited to baseball clubs' fears that star players would be affected in the field by too much time on the course. In fact, it's very probable that the stances of Griffith, Huggins and others was probably, at least in part, a sort of pre-emptive strike against a game that many in baseball feared was beginning to steal a piece of the national pastime's popularity.
For years, the arrival of baseball in the southern and western states in late winter and early spring had been a financial boon for small towns in those regions. But lately, promoters for professional golf tournaments had been approaching many of the same locales to pitch the idea of events in the out-of-the-way towns. They realized that hosting a baseball team in spring training gave locals entertainment for a few weeks, as well as the economic boost of hosting a franchise and its employees, along with their money, for that time. But while exhibition baseball might earn a town a mention in the newspapers of the team's home city, a high-profile professional golf tournament would likely earn publicity in almost every major newspaper in the country. Golf and baseball had been competing for the sports fan's summer dollar for a while. Now they were becoming combatants for the February and March discretionary income of customers, as well. Without a doubt, baseball saw golf as a potential threat. Players like Rice, pawns in this little ongoing power play, were paying the price. There was no way that men like Griffith, Huggins and McGraw wanted their star players populating America's golf courses all summer long, cast in the role of extremely effective endorsers for a sport eating into baseball's popularity as a spectator sport.
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