Wednesday, March 01, 2000

McPhee waited 101 years

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Long-ago Red was era's best 2nd baseman

BY JEFF CARLTON
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Bid McPhee played second base barehanded. | ZOOM |

        In his book about the Hall of Fame, Politics of Glory, baseball historian Bill James wrote that Bid McPhee was the best second baseman not in the Hall. That won't last for long.

        McPhee, who played in Cincinnati from 1882-1899, first with the American Association Red Stockings and later with the National League Reds, was elected to the Hall of Fame Tuesday by the veterans committee.

        McPhee was born John Alexander McPhee and was a traditionalist when baseball was too young to have much tradition. He led the American Association and the National League in fielding eight times, despite his refusal to wear a glove until the last three years of his career.

        “This glove business has gone on a little too far,” McPhee told The Enquirer in April of 1890. “True, hot-hit balls do sting a little at the opening of the season, but after you get used to it, there is no trouble on that score.”

        McPhee batted .271 with 52 home runs and 727 RBI in his 18-year career with the Reds. His eight homers led the league in 1886. He also scored at least 100 runs in 10 different seasons.

        He played 18 consecutive seasons with the team, a record that lasted until Dave Concepcion's 19th season with the Reds in 1988.

        Allen Lewis, a retired Philadelphia baseball writer, was among those veterans committee members who argued on McPhee's behalf during the Tuesday meeting.

        “In a rough era,” Lewis said, “he was a model of deportment and was never ejected from a game.”

        After his playing days ended, McPhee managed the Reds to an eighth-place finish in 1901 and retired midway through the 1902 season with the team mired in seventh.

        He was a Reds scout until 1909 and retired to the San Diego area in 1917. He died in 1943 at the age of 83.

        McPhee may be the last 19th century ballplayer to be inducted into the Hall. Since 1995, the veterans committee has held two special elections annually — one for 19th century candidates, the other for Negro League players.

        Those elections were scheduled to end in 1999, but the Hall of Fame board approved a one-year extension for the 19th century players at its meeting last summer, said Bill Deane, a former Hall of Fame senior research associate.

        “I think (McPhee) was the best second baseman of the 19th century,” Lewis said. “And that was the only position at which a 19th century player was not represented (in the Hall).”

        The Hall's induction ceremony is July 23 in Cooperstown, N.Y.

        Enquirer reporter Tim Sullivan contributed to this report.

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