Billy
He was often found on baseball’s dark side
Bygone baseball: The unfamiliar, the unusual, the dramatic
By C. Philip Francis
His name was Billy Maharg. Or was it? He is not known to those who closely follow the game, but does have three distinct historical connections with the game. William “Billy” Joseph Maharg was born on March 19, 1881 in Philadelphia. Little is known of his early years, but once said that he was raised on a farm. He became a street character in the City of Brotherly Love, and a sometime middleweight fighter. Billy had the good luck (Or was it bad?) of being in the right place at the right time (Or was it the wrong time?) during some of the game’s more ignominious incidents. His first known link with professional baseball came on May 18, 1912 at the age of 31 when he signed up to be a replacement player in the big league’s first player mutiny that became known as “Cobb’s strike game.”
Ty Cobb, an outfielder for the Detroit Tigers for 22 years in the early 1900’s, was one of baseball’s greatest players with a career average of .367, three .400 seasons, and 12 batting titles, but a complete failure in human relationships. He was cantankerous, overly combative on the field, and disliked by the other ballplayers – especially those on his own team. During the May 15, 1912 game with the New York Highlanders (later the Yankees) at New York’s Hilltop Field, a disabled New York fan (All fans were called “cranks” at that time) began the game by heckling Cobb with profane and abusive insults.
Cobb’s tormentor was Claude Lueker who had lost his left hand and three fingers from his other hand in a job-related accident. After three innings of constant baiting with no help from the stadium officials the Tiger player finally decided he had heard enough. He jumped the fence and began pummeling the unlucky Luecker with both fists and spiked shoes until the victim was “a bruised and bloody mess.”
American League President Ban Johnson fined Cobb $100, and suspended him for 10 days. Detroit’s next game was scheduled three days later on May 18 in Philadelphia, but the remaining Tigers said that if Cobb could not play, neither would they. The Detroit Tigers ballclub was then notified that if a team was NOT on the field for the scheduled game, they would have to pay a $5,000 fine to the league. Tiger owner Frank Navin and manager Hughie Jennings quickly recruited some “paper” players at the local sandlots and a seminary. Each Tiger for the Day was paid $10 with $25 going to the pitcher. One of the ersatz ballplayers in that game was third-baseman 31 year-old Billy Maharg - the only Tiger scrub to again appear in a Major League game.
A crowd of 15,000 saw the World Champion Philadelphia A’s clobber the amateur Tigers 24-2, and Navin had saved his $5,000. Cobb urged the regular players to return to the field as to not jeopardy their careers, sat out his suspension, and the one-day sit-down strike was over.
Maharg became a two-time Baseball Encyclopedia anomaly when besides his one line in the record book because of the 1912 farce, he somehow convinced a Philadelphia Phillies official to let him play in the final game of he 1916 season. Billy could now say that he had played big league baseball in both leagues. Also called “Fat Billy”, the 5’4” Maharg now had two “one-liners” in the record book that listed all zeros with the exception of two fielding assists. Three years later Billy would find himself involved in baseball once more, not in a team uniform this time, but as a star player in the game’s notorious 1919 Chicago Black Sox scandal.
It began when William Thomas Burns, “Sleepy Bill”, a former ML pitcher began talking to Sox star pitcher, Eddie Cicotte, after they accidentally met in a New York hotel in 1919. During their conversation Burns was told that some of the Sox players were ready to throw the Series if money was available to finance the operation. Burns said he could do it, but needed an assistant. That man was Billy Maharg who was soon on the train to New York. The next day Maharg met with Burns, Cicotte, and Chicago’s first baseman and apparent ringleader, Chick Gandil, who had close connections with the gambling world. When Gandil said that he could arrange to fix the Series for $100,000, Billy was sent back to Philly to find any big-time gambler for fast cash. He was not able to raise any money, but later met and talked to the top sportsman/gambler in America – Arnold Rothstein. Apparently Billy was successful.
The favored White Sox did lose the Series to the Cincinnati Reds five games to three. The following year eight Sox players were indicted for throwing the Series, but acquitted by a grand jury. However, their victory was short-lived when the “Eight Men Out” were forever banned from professional baseball by Major League’s newly appointed commissioner - Kenesaw Mountain Landis.
When Billy was called to be questioned as a witness, someone noted, “He flashed enough diamonds on his fingers to buy a flock of autos.” Billy was asked, “Are you a ballplayer named “Peaches” Graham?” The answer was, “No! I have never been anything but Billy Maharg. I know Graham, but I am not he.”
Note: Spell Maharg backwards, and now you know why the Baseball Encyclopedia lists both the names of William Joseph “Billy” Maharg and William Joseph Graham. Billy died in 1953 at the age of 72.