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Tris Speaker

By Dr. John D. Eigenauer
July 7, 2006

Timothy Gay’s Tris Speaker: The Rough-and-Tumble Life of a Baseball Legend is the first serious biography of Tris Speaker. Since Speaker was one of baseball’s greatest players, it is difficult to say why no one wrote his biography sooner. Obviously, the book was much needed and fills a significant void.

The book, however, is somewhat paradoxical because it is a popular biography published by a university press (University of Nebraska). Given its publisher, you expect footnotes and a scholarly approach, yet neither are present. For example, the author tells the story of Lefty Gomez gently reprimanding a young DiMaggio for trying to play shallower than did Tris Speaker. A note at the end of the book explains the story thus: “Several versions of the Gomez-DiMaggio story have appeared in print over the years and are referenced in different books and Web sites.” This enticingly fanciful story and its sloppy citation is sadly representative of various cases of careless documentation and easy acceptance of stories that make good reading and bad history.

This carelessness in certain matters is confusing because Gay can be a fairly scrupulous historian. At times, he is careful to point out that we don’t know key facts that account for a legendary part of Speaker’s life, and at others he corrects commonly accepted ideas, such as the myth that Speaker’s father was a Confederate cavalryman. Considered along side such farfetched statements as “Speaker so often threw out batters at first base after short-hopping line drives that his teammates came to view the play as ‘routine,’” one wonders what should be accepted and what rejected.

Because I found myself questioning Gay’s statements frequently, I checked a number of facts and found a disturbing number of inaccuracies. For example, Gay cites the dimensions of Huntington Avenue Grounds (Speaker’s first Major League ballpark in 1907) as being 440 feet down “the left-field line” (the distance was actually 350 feet), 635 feet to center field (which is correct beginning in 1908, but not in 1907), and “a mere 280 feet” to right field (the distance was 320 feet in 1908). In other words, the ballpark’s dimensions changed between 1901 and 1908 and Gay chose the most exaggerated ones from the two seasons, giving the impression that the ballpark was more irregular than it actually was. He also states that Chick Stahl was the only major leaguer to take his own life in the middle of the season. Actually, Stahl committed suicide in the off season; Willard Hershberger is the only player to take his own life in the middle of the season—he did so in 1940. These inaccuracies appear throughout the book and become irritating after a while; I want to read a biography and learn from it, not check facts.

Tristram Tris Speaker's 3514 hits are 5th all time and his 792 doubles are second to none.

Another irritating aspect of the book is how little of it is about Tris Speaker. Many chapters contain multiple vignettes of Speaker’s contemporaries, which would be fine if the story returned to Speaker in some meaningful way. Too often these stories seem like filler, connected to Speaker only coincidentally. The chapter entitled “The Early Years in Boston,” for example, contains lots of information on Harry Hooper, Ty Cobb, Sam Crawford, and others, but very little about Speaker.

Busy telling stories about those around Speaker, Gay occasionally misses opportunities to develop stories about his subject. For example, he relates a (potentially) terrific story about Speaker being on a baseball world tour and reading a statement in Paris to the press “denying that he was acting as an agent of the Federal League.” Was Speaker the only player to do this? We learn that he spoke out against the owners’ miserliness, but what did he say? Did it land him in trouble? Did his quotes make it back to Boston? I found a newspaper account that claimed that a Federal League agent had gone to Paris to convince Speaker to sign with the Chicago Americans, a rumor that would have enhanced Gay’s story considerably.

While the book generally reads well, at times it seems like a series of note cards patched together. A paragraph on the records of 1923 American League teams is followed by one about Speaker’s engagement ring gift to his girlfriend, followed by the Indians’ switch to new training facilities, followed by one describing Speaker’s rodeo appearances. The paragraphs have double spaces between them, indicating that the author or editor was aware that they were disconnected. This is a common—and distracting—device in the book.

Despite these critiques, I enjoyed the book. It is a nice introductory biography, but the need for a definitive biography of Speaker remains. Although Gay did his research in a number of cases (including traveling to Speaker’s home town and conducting interviews), his book is too full of inaccuracies to be taken completely seriously. I recommend it to fans who enjoy reading about baseball during the 1910s and 1920s, and for those who enjoy baseball biographies; but be careful about accepting the facts too quickly. It is good work, but it is unpolished and incomplete.

John Eigenauer can be contacted at jeigenauer@yahoo.com. A complete list of his reviews and more about him can be found here.