The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Gamble paid off for Atkins, and Athletics
Tommy Atkins’ gamble to leave Painesville High School in his senior year and take his pitching prowess as far as it could go had paid off.
In the summer of 1909, Atkins was a member of the Atlanta Crackers in the Southern League, with a commitment to join the Philadelphia Athletics and Connie Mack, perhaps the greatest manager the national pastime has ever known.
The Painesville Telegraph, which didn’t progress to having a full sports page for another decade and was known then as the Telegraph-Republican, proudly put the news of Atkins’ signing with the A’s on its front page Sept. 9, 1909.
“Tommy Atkins, the big noise of the Southern League, premier pitcher of the Atlanta team, is it. Tommy has landed,” the Telegraph wrote.
“Tommy will make good. The sporting editor of the Telegraph-Republican predicted as much for the youngster when he pitched for the P.H.S. team years ago. He has speed and curves to burn and has lately acquired control in a remarkable degree. Here’s to Tommy. May he pitch Painesville on the map.”
In September, with Atlanta having clinched the Southern League title, Mack had a request. He sent a note to Atlanta management that he wanted Atkins released early so he could make his major-league debut in a late-season series in which an extra arm was needed..
“Tommy Atkins has twirled his last game as a member of the Atlanta team — that is, a member of this year’s team,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote in its Sept. 16, 1909 edition. “… Atkins leaves for Philadelphia at noon today to join the cohorts of one Connie Mack and will endeavor to help them in winning another pennant. Atkins has the goods and the nerve, and if given a proper show and good support by the Athletics, he should get away with the majority of his games.
“Here’s hoping, Tommy, that you make good. The sporting editor is sure that he voices the sentiments of all the Atlanta fans when he says that.”
That major-league debut came Oct. 2 in a doubleheader against visiting Washington. Atkins went six innings and struck out four but was wild with five walks and did not factor in the decision as the A’s won, 6-5.
Atkins was the third Painesville native to make it to the majors, along with longtime 19th century MLB first baseman Ed Andrews and Marvin Hawley, who pitched one game in 1894 for Boston. But he was the first among that trio to get to MLB after starting his journey in the high school game.
For the 1910 season, Mack’s initial plan in February was for Atkins to return to Atlanta for further development. Atkins did enough, however, to spend the season with the A’s, who were hoping to contend for the American League pennant. He was used as a reliever and spot starter for the A’s in a rotation featuring Jack Coombs and eventual Hall of Famers Charles “Chief” Bender and Eddie Plank.
Following a 7-4 victory over the Tigers in May, in which Atkins fanned six before giving way to Bender, Sporting Life weighed in:
“The class and nerve of the Athletic team and management was demonstrated on Saturday when, at the critical stage with honors even, an experimental southpaw, little Tommy Atkins, was pitted against the hardest-hitting team in the league.
“The experiment appeared disastrous at the start, as Atkins’ nervousness was responsible for three runs in the first inning, but thereafter he proved effective with the aid of brilliant support.”
Even Atkins’ hometown paper couldn’t resist, calling him “the original horseshoe collector” after getting the win in his season debut in April against Boston.
Atkins had two chances to come back to Cleveland with the red-hot A’s, pitching against the then-Naps in August.
He was not immune to rankling from his teammates. A story was recounted in the Northern Nebraska Journal in 1910 about Atkins being sent to the coaching box as an annoyance for Tigers veteran pitcher Bill Donovan.
Donovan was so incensed by Atkins that he confronted the left-hander in the A’s dugout.
“Say, you little shriveled up shrimp,” Donovan told Atkins, finger pointed in his face. “If I ever hear you chirp again, I’ll sprinkle your beak all over your face.”
Atkins kept his beak and was solid enough. In 1910, he went 3-2 in 15 games, 12 in relief, with a 2.68 earned-run average and 29 strikeouts.
His last appearance came Sept. 28 at St. Louis against the Browns, a hardluck complete-game loss in which he yielded two runs on four hits and struck out five.
The A’s won the World Series that year and set a then-record with 102 regular-season wins. Unfortunately, Mack condensed his staff to his big three of Coombs, Bender and Plank, so Atkins did not pitch in the World Series against the Cubs.
He still got a $2,000 bonus from the A’s for the World Series title and returned to Painesville with his wife for the winter.
That start against the Browns wound up the last of Atkins’ major-league career.
Mack decided in February 1911 to send the southpaw to Baltimore of the Eastern League. Atkins was then traded back to Atlanta in June after going 5-2 with 76 strikeouts with the Orioles.
In Cleveland, Naps players openly wondered to local media how Atkins didn’t get another shot with cellar dwellers such as St. Louis or Washington, and Mack admitted in June cutting Atkins loose may have been a mistake after injuries hit the A’s.
Atkins was purchased for a month by the Dodgers in August 1911 before being returned to Atlanta.
He later spent two seasons with the Fort Wayne Billikens of the Central League in 1913 and 1914, winning 37 games and striking out 319 in 498 innings.
His career before big crowds was not yet over.
By 1915, Atkins came back to Cleveland to pitch in its budding amateur circuit.
“Atkins decided to quit the pro game and take up engineering in Cleveland,” the Sporting News reported.
Because he refused to report to Fort Wayne in turn, he was suspended. But by the league president’s request, Atkins was granted an “honorable discharge.”
In the summer of 1915, Atkins was the ace for the Stinchcomb Engineers, one of the leading Class A clubs in Cleveland’s amateur ranks. He was outdueled by fellow former American League pitcher Glenn Liebhardt in a 3-2 loss to pacesetter White Auto, but struck out 13.
Atkins got revenge a week later against White Auto, a 3-2 win in which he scattered five hits, tossed a complete game and delivered the eventual gamewinning RBI single in the eighth. White Auto manager Babe Minnis was reported to have said during the game, “Drive that smile off his face,” and his charges could not.
Atkins pitched Stinchcomb to the city championship series with shutouts of May Company and Preisels, the latter July 18 drawing a crowd of around 15,000 at Brookside Stadium.
Game 1 of that city title tilt against White Auto was a masterpiece. He fanned 14 as Stinchcomb reigned, 5-1, before a crowd of 20,000 at Brookside. The amateur popularity was noticed by the Naps, who weren’t drawing as well for some games.
White Auto came back to win the series, but thought enough of Atkins to bring him aboard as an extra player for a regional series at Detroit and beyond. He struck out 14 as White won Game 2 of that series, 5-2.
Atkins also got a crack at MLB’s New York Giants on Sept. 27 as part of an amateur all-star team, throwing three shutout and hitless innings but the amateurs lost, 5-0.
He was on the White Auto roster as it took on a team from Omaha in what was regarded as a national championship series for amateur ball.
Oct. 10, 1915, that game was said to have been witnessed by the largest crowd to ever see baseball in Cleveland — 115,000 at Brookside Stadium — as White Auto lost.
Atkins spent much of the next decade in the amateur scene as a pitcher and manager.
He married twice more, in 1914 to Helen, a stenographer from Fort Wayne, and later to Freida.
Atkins worked in various jobs after baseball, including as a foreman at Otis Steel, a foundry man at Pig Iron Company, an employment manager for an auto accessories firm and a maintenance man at a state highway garage.
He continued to reside in Cleveland, his last home on Kelley Avenue.
Francis Montgomery Atkins died May 7, 1956, at the age of 68.
He was survived by Frieda, three siblings and a stepson, Tom.
“A former local sandlot pitching star, Frank (Tommy) Atkins, passed away from a heart ailment yesterday in St. Luke’s Hospital,” the Cleveland News reported.
“A native Nebraskan, Atkins worked as a maintenance man until the past year.”
The Cleveland media lauded Atkins after his death as a staple of the amateur ranks and for his brief but memorable stint with the A’s. He was laid to rest at Whitehaven Memorial Park in Mayfield Heights.
As a young man a halfcentury earlier, he had put Painesville on the map in baseball.
“Frank M. Atkins came to the Athletics in 1910 via the Atlanta club. He is a southpaw pitcher and is chock full of nerve and spine,” his 1910 Reach American League preview player profile stated.
“He gave the little hayseed high school such a reputation around the suburbs of Cleveland that he drew a professional engagement. … Tommy has a fingernail fling which is a grand ball, and when modestly asked what he possesses, says, ‘a fast one and a curve.’
Not to mention possessing the point from where it all began from which it became possible for Painesville to dream about major-league ball via a high school diamond, the specific manner of which will never be seen again.