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I’ve said many times that whenever you look deep into the career of a major leaguer you’ll almost always find some interesting details; and boy, does Ron Christensen prove me right today!  Being the baseball history nerd that I am, I had heard of Arthur Irwin, but I had no idea of his up and down career and life! Stay to the end to read of the demise of one of baseball’s truly eccentric characters. -GL

Another Edition of:

Baseball’s Eccentrics!

The Curious Career of Arthur Irwin

“Irwin was probably the most disgusting man I ever knew.”  -Waite Hoyt

Arthur Irwin is not a widely recognized name in the annals of baseball.  And yet he forged a baseball career that spanned forty years, including eleven as an active player.  Through it all, Irwin experienced distinguished highs and bottomless lows, earning him a reputation as one of the most polarizing figures in the history of the game.  His life, just like his tumultuous career, would also end in controversy.

Irwin was born in Toronto, Canada to a family that moved to Boston when he was five years old.  He played shortstop for several seasons in amateur ball before being recruited in 1879 by the Worcester Worcesters, a minor league club in the National Association.  Irwin made his debut in an exhibition game against the Chicago White Stockings, the same day Lee Richmond made his debut.  Richmond, a pitcher, threw a no-hitter against the White Stockings, while Irwin made a couple of standout plays at shortstop. 

Bolstered by Richmond’s 47 wins, the Worcesters played themselves into a National League berth the following season, the highlight of which came on June 12, 1880 when Richmond pitched the first perfect game in major league history.  Irwin scored the game’s only run.  In 85 games that season, Irwin led the league with 345 assists.  He also led the league in Defensive WAR, Double Plays and Range Factor.  Consistent with the ups and downs of his career, Irwin also led the league in errors. 

The Worcester club folded in 1882, and Irwin moved on to captain the Providence Grays.  During the 1883 season, Irwin broke the third and fourth fingers on his left hand.  Refusing to sit out any games, he modified an oversized buckskin driving glove with additional padding and sewed the fingers together to allow room for bandages.  His innovation led to an agreement with sporting goods retailer Draper and Maynard for the manufacture of “The Irwin Glove.”  Soon 90% of all professional players were wearing it.

Irwin is also credited with inventing the first football scoreboard, a design he patented and developed for use in the Ivy League in the 1890s.  By 1915, Irwin’s scoreboards were used at both ends of the field in the Army-Navy game at the Polo Grounds.  Irwin also founded and organized the American League of Professional Football, the country’s first professional soccer league, and promoted boxing matches, roller hockey games and marathon bicycle races. 

In 1891 Irwin managed the Boston Reds of the upstart American Association, and wasted no time in making enemies of National League team owners when he convinced Cincinnati Reds owner Al Johnson to move his team to the American Association.  Johnson sold his team before the start of the season and the new owners returned it to the National League.  Though Cincinnati’s presence in the AA was short-lived, Irwin’s tainted reputation in the minds of National League owners was not soon forgotten.

Irwin publicly accused future Hall of Famer and Giants’ captain Buck Ewing of furnishing signs to the National League Boston Beaneaters to ensure a Boston sweep of the Giants in the final series of the 1891 season.  Beaneaters manager Frank Selee was so upset with Irwin’s accusations he refused to play a post-season series against Irwin’s Reds, winners of the AA pennant.  Irwin also publicly accused Connie Mack of underhanded dealings in colluding with Boston’s minor league club to procure the services of third baseman Jim Ritter.

From 1893-1895 Irwin managed the University of Pennsylvania team where he coached future author Zane Grey.  Grey’s first baseball book, ‘The Short-Stop,’ is dedicated in part to Irwin.  Grey’s second baseball book, ‘The Young Pitcher,’ introduces the character Worry Arthurs, a fictionalized version of Irwin. 

As manager of the New York Giants, Irwin scouted future star and Hall of Famer Nap Lajoie playing in the minor leagues, and recommended that Giants’ owner Andrew Freedman sign him for $1,000.00.  Freedman refused.  Irwin also scouted young minor league pitcher Ray Caldwell (about whom a recent essay was written on Baseball History Comes Alive) and in 1910 signed him to a contract with the New York Highlanders.

But in scouting, as in most everything else having to do with Irwin, the good was tempered with the bad.   In 1921, Irwin managed the Hartford Senators of the Eastern League and signed a then unknown Lou Gehrig to a contract two years before scout Paul Krichell signed Gehrig to play for the Yankees.  Gehrig had just graduated from high school and would enter Columbia University in the fall on a football scholarship.  Gehrig was invited to work out with the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds, where John McGraw saw potential and sent him to Hartford to meet with Irwin.  Irwin signed Gehrig to play with Hartford for the summer, without explaining that signing professionally could jeopardize Gehrig’s athletic scholarship.  Instead, he had Gehrig play under the assumed name of Lou Lewis.  Columbia University learned of this and suspended Gehrig from participating in collegiate sports for a year.

While a scout with the Highlanders, Irwin and Highlanders’ manager George Stallings worked out an elaborate scheme to steal signs from opposing teams.  Stallings rented an apartment overlooking Hilltop Park where the Highlanders played their home games.  Irwin would go onto the roof with binoculars, intercept the opposing team’s signs and relay these to Stallings using a set of reflective mirrors. The system worked for a couple of seasons, until teams caught on and complained to league officials.

But of all the crazy and controversial things Arthur Irwin did, maybe the craziest and most controversial of all was discovered after his death.  In 1921, Irwin learned he had stomach cancer and hadn’t long to live.  One night, while on board a steamship bound from New York to Boston, Irwin jumped over the side into the waters of the Atlantic Ocean and was never heard from again.  After his death it was learned that Irwin had a wife and three children living in Boston, and another wife and son living in New York.  He was still married to both women when he died, and had been for more than twenty years.  In all that time, neither family had been aware of the other family. 

It would seem that for a man who invented a scoreboard, Arthur Irwin had some difficulty of his own keeping score.

“Arthur Irwin is the dean of scouts.”  -Harpers Weekly

“Irwin assumes a know-it-all air which often times gives friends a very severe pain in the neck.” –The Buffalo Enquirer

“Irwin is the clearest sighted, coolest headed manager in the business today.”   -The Philadelphia Inquirer

“There was no brainier or speedier fielder or batsman in 1880’s baseball.”  -Al Spink, (The National Game)

“Irwin was one of the slimier men in baseball.”  Daniel Levitt, (Ed Barrow: The Bulldog Who Built The Yankees First Dynasty) 

Arthur Irwin was posthumously inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 1989

Ron Christensen

REFERENCES:

Opening Waite Hoyt quote from from Daniel Levitt, (Id.)

1. Wikipedia: Arthur Irwin
2. SABR: Arthur Irwin, by Eric Frost
3. com, Arthur Irwin
4. Baseball Reference: Arthur Irwin
5. com, Arthur Irwin and Football’s First Scoreboards
6. Charles Paolino’s Blog: A Spouse in Every Port
7. Diamond Mind Online: Arthur Irwin
8. Baseball Babylon, by Dan Gutman
9. National Baseball Hall of Fame: Gehrig’s Pro Career Started Four Years Before He Became A Yankees First Baseman, by Bill Francis

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