Free Agency... Then and Now - Backroads and Ballplayers #33
Stories of the famous and not-so-famous men and women from the days when baseball was "Arkansas' Game." Always free and always short enough to finish in one cup of coffee.
Free Agents, Fred Bennett and Johnny Sain
It is free agent time. This a new chance for general managers to earn their keep and choose from what I have counted as 125 job applicants. As a frequent TV spot reminds us, they need help. “Indeed they do!”
I know the analytics guys love this time of year when they get to play the “Money Ball” game. Although there are probably some hidden algorithms, I think I have unraveled the basic math behind my Cardinals’ free-agent shopping.
If I am correct, the Redbirds are using some simple addition that ends in the sum of Age, Accumulated innings, Runs allowed, and career Pitch count. I call it AARP for simplification, and the higher the AARP score the better. The best thing about this secret formula is that since their opponents are not savvy enough to make this kind of complex calculation, the Redbirds can grab some guys their rivals have overlooked. Has John Lester really retired?
As a senior citizen, I am stuck in simpler times when teams owned players and Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and Hank Aaron had to settle for $100,000. Now, 100+ guys are looking for work, and the top three according to a recent post by MLB.com are two amazing guys from Japan and the National League Cy Young winner. (I am shaking my head)
During my day, the sharing of which happens to be the purpose of this blog, the big Arkansas “free agent” stories involved Fred Bennett from Atkins and Yell County’s Johnny Sain.
Fred and Johnny
Fred Bennett was born March 15, 1902, in Atkins, Arkansas, and by his early 20s, he was a local baseball prodigy. Bennett played semi-pro baseball in a Sunday afternoon picnic league called the Western Arkansas League. Fred’s bat work made Atkins a formidable bunch and they brought home the league title in most WAL seasons.
By 1924, Bennett’s prowess had earned him a shot with Muskogee in the Class “C” Western Association, where he hit .345 in 48 games. In the next three years with Muskogee and Class “A” Tulsa, he would average over 30 homers a year with a batting average consistently in the .350 range. Compact and powerful at 5’9” and 185 pounds, Fred was headed to the majors on the fast track. The fast track, however, had an obstacle that would prove difficult to maneuver for the youngster from Arkansas.
In the minors, Bennett was a lifetime .300 hitter with power. He hit more than twenty homers six times during a fourteen-year career. He played for sixteen minor league teams and two major league teams. Despite these accomplishments, Bennett has had more significant literature written about him in law journals than in baseball history books.
In the Roaring '20s, Fred Bennett rode lots of buses. After being acquired by minor league Tulsa, the young outfielder moved among the St. Louis Browns’ major league club, and minor league teams in Milwaukee and Wichita Falls. In September 1929, Wichita Falls sold Bennett's contract to the Browns outright for $5,000.00 - notwithstanding the fact that the Pittsburgh Pirates had offered the minor league franchise twice that amount for the promising player. Baseball Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis smelled something fishy. Marquette Sports Law Journal, Spring 1999 p.404
In 1928, Fred Bennett got his chance with the St. Louis Browns. In Arkansas, where everyone’s grandfather was a Cardinal fan, the Browns were St. Louis’ other team. St. Louis fans felt the same, and the Browns were seldom competitive and consequently poorly supported at the gate. Fred was a prized prospect, too good to sit on the bench and draw a major league salary from the cash-starved Browns but not quite ready for a starting spot. The answer was to place him in the minors, ready when the Browns needed him, but drawing a minor league salary.
In the late 1920s, the minor league system we know today was not in place, and minor league teams “owned” players in a similar way to major league clubs. The rules protecting a player’s rights gave them the freedom to find another team if a team retained ownership of that player for two seasons. Phil Ball, the Browns owner, had a scheme to keep Bennett from signing with another team by “selling” him to various minor league teams Ball owned. This plan kept Bennett from signing with the competition and under the Browns’ control.
In an act of defiance uncharacteristic for a young man from rural Arkansas, Bennett objected and took his case to Baseball Commissioner, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Landis ran pro baseball with an iron hand. A stern-faced former Federal Judge with piercing eyes and a no-nonsense demeanor, Landis was the first commissioner of baseball. He served as commissioner for almost 25 years and defined the power of the position by his decisions. Appointed by the owners in 1920 to deal with the Black Sox scandal and given almost unlimited power over the game, Landis was seldom challenged.
In 1931, Landis ruled that Bennett was “free” to sign with any major league club because he was being hidden by the Browns. Brown’s owner Phillip Ball sued the commissioner in Federal Court, but the court upheld the power of the commissioner and affirmed Landis’ right to set Bennett free. Bennett signed with the Pirates for more than $4,000 a season, but career-wise it was too late. He was not the same player who averaged 35 homers a year in the minors. Although just 29, he was plagued by injuries and played only 32 games for the Pirates before finding himself back in the minors to stay. Bennett never reached the skill level he had enjoyed before he was declared a free agent, but he did earn enough from baseball to open a clothing store in his hometown.
Although rural Yell County, Arkansas was off baseball’s beaten path, Johnny Sain was fortunate to have two very capable mentors. His father, John Franklin Sain, Sr., a pretty good semi-pro pitcher in his own right, taught him a wicked curve ball. Conveniently, major league pitcher Elton Walkup lived right down the road. Before he left in late winter for spring training with the St. Louis Browns, Walkup would play catch with the teenager, and in Sain’s words, “He wised me up on a lot of tricks and gave me invaluable advice.”
The elder Sain was convinced young Johnny had the talent to be a big league pitcher. Others were not so easily convinced. Sain stood 6’2’ and weighed about 200 lbs. He looked like he could throw hard, but he his fastball was nonexistent. A 17-year-old who depended on a curve ball to get hitters out was not impressive. Yankee great, Bill Dickey, reportedly refused to talk to young Johnny after seeing him pitch in a high school game, because Dickey had nothing good to say. Sain was laughed at, discouraged, and told to go into the necktie business, but father and son would not give up.
Sain eventually got a shot with Osceola in the Northeast Arkansas League. He spent four seasons in the Class D NEAR and developed into the league’s best hurler. Sain was content. Now the property of the Detroit Tigers, he was 21, had a job, and was only 4 hours from Havana. His life, however, was about to become much more complicated.
After the 1939 season, baseball Commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis made one of his mass releases of minor leaguers. The commissioner felt the players were unfairly hidden in lower classifications by major league teams. This time, Judge Landis released 91 players from the Tiger organization’s minor league teams. Among those released was Johnny Sain.
While being a free agent in today’s world means a chance to get the best salary possible in a competitive market, to Johnny Sain, it meant being without a job. Sain was not exactly filled with confidence by reviews from men like Bill Dickey and others who said he should forget pro baseball and get a job. He had spent the last four seasons pitching in the Class D leagues of Northeast Arkansas and things were going pretty well. In the1938 he had gone 16-4 with a 2.72 ERA and in 1939 he won 18 games with a 3.27 Earned Run Average. He was pitching about three hours from Yell County and he was not hauling hay in July. Suddenly he was unemployed. The commissioner called it free!
Although liberated, Sain was a player without a team as the 1940 season began. He caught on with Nashville in the Class A Southern Association, where he was a combined 14 - 16 in 1940 and 1941, in the higher classification. In the spring of 1942, despite not having a great deal of success in Nashville, Sain was recommended by his manager to Boston Braves manager, Casey Stengel. Boston was desperate for pitchers, as an escalating World War II drew more players into the military. The Braves were not very good, and Sain was good enough to remain with the team the entire season, pitch in 40 games, and post a respectable 3.90 ERA. Although the National League was severely depleted by military enlistments, Johnny Sain was a major leaguer. Later that same year, Sain got his draft notice.
A remarkable thing happened to Johnny Sain in the military. He improved as a pitcher while away from organized baseball much more significantly than he had when he was pitching professionally. Sain was assigned to the Navy, became a pilot, and was eventually promoted to flight instructor. He developed personal confidence in the Navy and learned to relax under pressure. Later Sain would credit much of his success to his military service.
Sain pitched regularly for military teams, comprised of former major leaguers, against excellent barnstorming teams. He even became the answer to a baseball trivia question when he walked Babe Ruth in an exhibition game. It was the Bambino’s last at bat in an organized game.
The competitive games and new confidence enabled Sain to return to the majors in 1946 as one of the league’s best pitchers. Sain led the Braves in wins, ERA, innings pitched, and strikeouts. It was an impressive return for a pitcher who had won only four major league games before the war. Being a free agent and a pilot had not been so scary after all. He was suddenly one of the best pitchers in the major leagues.
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