Why Carl Mays isn't in the Hall of Fame
Carl Mays last lived in Oklahoma in 1912. Last pitched in the major leagues in 1929. Last lived anywhere in 1971. But he hasn't been forgotten by Oklahomans.
The great Mike Sowell, former sports editor of the Tulsa Tribune and former OSU journalism professor, wrote a book about Mays.
Adam Lynn, when he was director of the Chisholm Trail Museum in Kingfisher, campaigned to get Mays inducted into the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame.
And now Mark House, the patron saint of Hall of Fame causes, carries the flame. He's trying to get Mays enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
That's a tall order for one of baseball's greatest villains.
Mays won 207 major-league games in his 15-year career. He was a starter on the 1917 Red Sox and the 1922 Yankees; historian Bill James has termed each the best pitching staff of their respective decades.
But Mays is not remembered for that. He's remembered as the pitcher who killed Ray Chapman.
On Aug. 16, 1920, Mays threw the pitch that beaned the Indians' star shortstop, and Chapman died the next day.
Sowell's phenomenal book about Chapman and Mays was entitled The Pitch That Killed. And House wants the baseball world to remember Mays for something other than that pitch.
House is a historian who led the charges to get Bill Greason, breaker of Oklahoma City baseball's color barrier, and Mike Moore into the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame. House also is campaigning to get Ace Gutowsky inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Gutowsky was a 1930s star with the Detroit Lions; he's a longshot for Canton. But Gutowsky is a short shot compared to Mays. Carl William Mays was born Nov. 12, 1891, in Liberty, Kentucky. When Mays was 12, his father died, and the family relocated to a farm outside Kingfisher, about 50 miles northwest of downtown Oklahoma City.
In Kingfisher County, Mays took up baseball. At age 16, he pitched Hennessey to the semipro state championship, in those days when town teams were the structure of competition. A few years later, Mays was playing minor league baseball in Boise, Idaho, and by 1915, at age 23, he was a teammate of Babe Ruth on the Red Sox.
And Mays was a great pitcher. Baseball historian Bill James called Mays the last of the hard-throwing underhanded pitchers; Mays used the submarine style that mostly went out of vogue in later decades. In 2000, James ranked Mays as the 38thbest pitcher of all time, which certainly falls into Cooperstown parameters. Mays had five 20-win seasons. His 207 career victories are a little thin, but his 2.92 career earned run average, for a guy who pitched the entire 1920s, is excellent.
Mays wasn't Lefty Grove, but he was better than Lefty Gomez. Both are in the Hall of Fame. Mays is not enshrined, and not just because of the pitch that killed. From all accounts, Mays was a hard man, surly from a young age. He was in constant personality battles, with teammates, with opponents, with American League president Ban Johnson.
Bob Shawkey, Mays' teammate on the Yankees, was quoted in The Man in the Dugout as saying “down south in the spring the next year (1921), none of the regular players would mix with him. He corralled some of the younger players and told them `if you got to knock somebody down to win a ballgame, do it. It's your bread and butter.' He says this after a killing a man!”
But clearly, Mays was a victim of circumstance, too. Baseball had no interest in player safety in 1920. Batting helmets were not in use – House points out that his great-grandfather wore a helmet in World War I, but baseball had no such interest in protecting heads. And balls were more lethal.
“The death of Ray Chapman was a shock to the baseball community,” Bill James wrote in The Historical Baseball Abstract. “Chapman was killed by a dirty gray ball that he probably did not pick up as quickly as he could have.”
Ban Johnson apparently had issued a directive weeks early for umpires to preserve balls to save money. Mays claimed a dirty, hard-to-see baseball was in play when Chapman was killed. Umpires responded, according to James, with a statement that said, “No pitcher in the American League has resorted to more trickery than Carl Mays.”
Mays later claimed that Chapman, who crowded the plate, had veered into the strike zone, a theory which probably wasn't well-received, particularly since Chapman was an up-and-coming star who himself was on a Hall of Fame track until the pitch that killed.
Sowell noted that Mays, already unpopular in the game for his aggressive pitching and sour demeanor, immediately became a marked man after Chapman's death. Threats were made on Mays' life. Teams talked of boycotting Yankee games. Ban Johnson publicly wondered if Mays ever again would be effective. But Mays remained effective. He was a Hall of Fame pitcher who never sniffed induction.
“Why is Carl Mays, to this day, held personally responsible for what is clearly the fault of what seems to be a variety of uncontrolled circumstances of his time?” House asked in a letter to Rick Hummel of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a member of the Hall of Fame's Early Baseball Era committee. “… so, one of baseball's greatest pitchers accidentally killed a man. This seems to be all that is remembered of Carl `Sub' Mays, with his case stamped `CLOSED' and dated Aug. 16, 1920, in regard to Baseball Hall of Fame worthiness.”
House has a point. Mays was a product of his time. In America, we too often judge people by contemporary standards. Baseball is no different.
Mays played baseball the way baseball was played. He was a polarizing personality. So were Ty Cobb and John McGraw. I don't know if Mays deserves induction or not. But the pitch that killed shouldn't be automatic exclusion.