Slug
A look back at Harry Heilmann, the Hall of Fame baseball player
Bygone baseball by C. Philip Francis
Part 1
It was just after work on a 1913 Saturday afternoon when Harry, a 19-year-old affable bookkeeper for a San Francisco biscuit company, suddenly remembered that he had left his coat at the office. On his way back he happened to see a friend who badly needed a third baseman for a game that afternoon, and not only was the bookkeeper able to help out a friend in crisis he doubled in the winning run in the 11th. Harry Edwin Heilmann had begun his Hall of Fame baseball career.
A scout had been watching that game, and quickly signed Harry, also called “Slug” and “Harry, the Horse”, to a contract for the Class B Portland Colts where he hit .305 with 11 home runs for Portland before the Detroit Tigers bought his contract for $1,500. When Harry showed his baseball earnings to his parents they became concerned wondering if their son had done something dishonest saying, “Nobody pays such kind of money to a boy for just playing a game.”
Heilmann reported to Tiger manager Hughie Jennings for the 1914 season, but the first baseman/outfielder hit only .225 prompting the team to send him to San Francisco of the Pacific Coast League where he batted a fine .364 during the 1915 season. The 200- pound, six-feet, one-inch right-hander was slow on the base paths and awkward in the field. The Tigers brought him back up for the 1916 season, and except for the first half of the 1918 season when he was quartermaster on a submarine during World War I, Heilmann continued to play for the Detroit Tigers through 1929.
Harry was still at first base in 1919 and 1920 when he led the American League in errors at that position both years, but was sent back to the outfield where he joined Ty Cobb in center and Bobby Veach in left field. The former bookkeeper had been a good hitter, and was now about to become a great one. He first past the .300 hitting barrier in 1919 with a .320, and then followed with a .309. Heilmann became a hitting machine, and never fell below .300 until his last playing year of 1932.
Detroit manager Jennings was gone following the 1920 season with Ty Cobb taking over as manager/player. He soon moved Heilmann to the outfield, and then began to work with Harry’s hitting technique. The tutoring immediately paid off as Harry’s batting average soared to a league winning .394, and later said, “Ty showed me how to stand so that I was always on balance…He taught me how to study pitchers and catchers and catalogue information. He taught me how to hit.” In that year of 1921 Cobb was not far behind with a .389 as the Bengals had the top two league hitters. In spite of all the power generated at the plate that year, the Tigers finished the year in sixth place, 27 games behind the New York Yankees.
As Cobb’s managerial career continued through the next six years, he and Heilmann forged a lifetime bond of friendship as Harry also became one of the greatest and feared hitters of the time. He was also a close friend of Babe Ruth, and may have been the only contemporary companion of both Ruth and Cobb. A broken collarbone in 1922 slowed him down to a .356 average, and then bounced back to .403 in 1923 beating out Babe Ruth’s .393! The potent batter’s average was the last .400 in the American League until Ted Williams’s .406 in 1941. Heilmann continued to win the American League batting title on odd-numbered years – 1921 (.394), 1923 (.403), 1925 (.393), and 1927 (.398) – before faltering in 1929 when he hit “only” .344. Slug usually had a two-year contract, and when he was asked about winning those batting crowns on alternate years he laughingly explained that those were “salary drives” for the next contract.
Starting the final month of the 1925 season the Detroit flycatcher was almost 50 points behind Tris Speaker, and suddenly Harry began to swing a hot bat. Detroit closed the year with a double-header with the Browns in St. Louis, and on that morning Heilmann followed Speaker by the smallest of margins - .38927 to .38826. After three hits in six at-bats in the first game, his teammates urged Harry the Horse to spend the second game on the bench. No, he would not tarnish any title by sitting out the last game of the season.
In the nightcap Heilmann went three-for-three giving him six hits out of nine trips to the plate allowing him to win the award with a .393 as Speaker finished the year with a .389.
The 1927 batting race was a repeat when the big Tiger outfielder went into the final game of the year trailing Al Simmons by only one point. In a double-header in Cleveland Heilmann had four hits in the first game and three in the second game winding up the year with .398, six points ahead of Simmons.
Things began to change for Harry in 1926 when player/manager Cobb was sent to the Philadelphia A’s where he finished his celebrated playing career in 1928. The following year Heilmann began to have problems with arthritis in his wrists, and was sold to the Cincinnati Reds on October 14, 1929 for cash. He was able to give the Reds one good season in 1930, but was unable to perform the following year as his career was coming near the end. After 15 games as a player/coach for the Reds in 1932 the lovable Tiger finally hung up his glove forever.
Next: Part 2 – Harry Heilmann, the pioneer radio announcer.
Slug
Harry Heilmann as a pioneer baseball radio announcer
Bygone baseball by C. Philip Francis
Prologue: Harry Edwin Heilmann, also know as Slug or Harry the Horse, was born on August 3, 1894 in San Francisco. He was a bookkeeper before changing to baseball at the age of 19, and most of his 17 major league years from 1914 to 1932 were spent with the Detroit Tigers. After retiring from baseball Harry soon became a pioneer baseball radio announcer giving play-by-play for the Detroit Tigers on station WXYZ.
Much of the following information on Heilmann’s years behind the mike comes from Mr. Maury Logan who now lives in Lake Wales, Florida. Both Maury and Harry worked together at WXYZ before and after World War II. Maury had begun employment with the station in 1941, and stayed there until 1966 when he left to buy a small business in Lake Wales. A special thanks to Mr. Logan for sharing these special baseball moments with us.
*
In the spring of 1934 baseball radio broadcasts of the Detroit Tigers were already done by popular Ty Tyson for station WWJ, but WXYZ and the Michigan Radio Network were determined to also have the Tiger games on their station. In order to compete with Tyson they needed a “real, topflight guy”, and decided on the former Tiger outfielder, Harry Heilmann, who was then working in the sheriff’s department. Frank Navin owned the Detroit baseball club, and did not like the idea of a second station broadcasting although it was Depression time and money was tight. Navin finally agreed to the price of $25,000, and so the Tigers allowed a second radio station to carry the same Tiger ballgames.
An official from WXYZ soon contacted Harry, and they decided to meet at a nearby bar. After ordering drinks the man from WXYZ asked if Heilmann had ever considered going into announcing. “No, I never thought about it,” was the reply. It wasn’t long before Harry signed a contract for $50 a week, and now Tiger fans could chose between either Ty Tyson or Harry Heilmann to describe their favorite team on radio.
The new Tiger voice had a photographic memory, and could recall long ago incidents almost word for word. He was the perfect announcer who had an endless amount of stories and anecdotes from his long baseball career, and according to Mr. Logan, “He was a nice guy. I’ve seen him walk into a room with half a dozen or more people there, and personally greet everyone there.”
If the Detroit Tigers were in town Harry would be at the stadium where he described the game by wire that was sent back to WXYZ on the 13th floor in the Maccabees Building. When the team was on the road the game came by telegraph to Heilmann’s telegrapher, Bill Shackley, who had the game on ticker tape that was placed in front of Harry. From his desk Harry would convert the telegraphic words into a living game for the listening fans. Mr. Logan remembers one particular away game:
“In the early postwar years, probably 1946, and whenever the Tigers played out of town Harry would do his games by reconstruction. For some reason that year, whether Detroit didn’t go on daylight saving time or because of a quirk in scheduling, the Boston away games would start a full hour before Harry began to broadcast, and as he realistically read the telegraphic messages he would pace himself at game speed. After the game Bill Shackley, the great old telegrapher who always worked with Harry, would put his telegraph key into his briefcase and leave. On his way out he always stuck his head into Master Control and give us the final results.
“This particular day Williams came up in the ninth with the bases loaded and hit a home run. Boston won 11 to 10 or some unbelievable score. A moment or so after that Larry Ladue, one of our better beer drinking engineers, decided it was time to stroll out to visit Dad Buslepp’s Tavern for his afternoon break. When he entered the bar the place was madly listening to the game with bets going back and forth, not about who was going to win the game but by how much. It seemed that Detroit just couldn’t stop scoring, and poor Boston could not buy a run.
“Larry stood it as long as he could, and finally yelled out, ‘Well, I can tell you what’s going to happen – Williams will come up in the ninth with the bases loaded and hit a home run. Boston will win the game 11-10.’ You can imagine how quiet it suddenly got.
“One particular individual at the bar wanted to take something of Larry’s forecast, and became quite hostile yelling, ‘Put your money where your mouth is!’ So Larry put down a sure $20, and even took a $5 bet from Dad Buslepp.
“After the crowd cleared out, Larry explained the situation to Dad, and offered to give the money back. Dad wouldn’t take it, but said that they could really make some real money on those Boston games. Of course they didn’t.”
Mr. Logan mentioned that Harry was a long time smoker, and that in the fall of 1948 he realized something was physical wrong, and decided that it was time to see his physician. After the check-up Harry was told that there were three different possibilities, and as it turned out “it was the worst of the three.” It was lung cancer.
Maury Logan continues, “I remember vividly how, accompanied by a friend, Harry made a visit to our studio just a short time before he died in 1951. He climbed the stairs to our second story level control room (Note: The station had moved.), and gave us his great big smile with his greeting. One of the men later remarked how near death he looked.
Harry Heilmann died on July 9, 1951, and was elected to the baseball Hall of Fame the following year.