Baseball player and manager, born in Marshalltown, Iowa, USA. During his 22-year career as a first baseman for the Chicago White Stockings (187697), he compiled a lifetime batting average of ·334 and amassed 3041 total hits. He served as player-manager for Chicago for 19 years (187997) and managed the New York Giants (1898). As prestigious and popular as any player until Babe Ruth, he is generally recognized as having used his influence to bar African-Americans from playing major league baseball from the 1880s. He was elected to baseball's Hall of Fame in 1939.
| Cap Anson | |
|---|---|
| First Baseman | |
| Batted: Right | Threw: Right |
| MLB Debut | |
| May 6, 1871 for the Rockford Forest Citys | |
| Final game | |
| October 3, 1897 for the Chicago Colts | |
| Career Statistics | |
| AVG | .333 |
| HR | 97 |
| RBI | 2076 |
| Teams | |
| Rockford Forest Citys (1871) Philadelphia Athletics (1872-1875) Chicago White Stockings (1876-1889) Chicago Colts (1890-1897) | |
| Career Highlights and Awards | |
Adrian Constantine "Cap" Anson (April 17, 1852, Marshalltown, Iowa - April 14, 1922, Chicago, Illinois) was a professional baseball player in the National Association and Major League Baseball.
Early baseball career
Beginning in 1866, Anson spent two years at the high-school age boarding school of the University of Notre Dame after being sent there by his father in hopes of curtailing his mischievousness. Anson played on a number of competitive baseball clubs in his youth and began to play professionally in the National Association (NA) at the age of 19. Hulbert broke league rules by negotiating with Anson and several other stars while the 1875 season was still in progress and ultimately founded the new National League to forestall any disciplinary action. Anson, who had married a Philadelphia native in the meantime, had second thoughts about going west, but Hulbert held Anson to his contract and he eventually warmed to the Windy City. After the expression first became popular, in the 1890s, he retroactively claimed to used some of the first "hit and run" plays, and, especially aided by clever base runner Mike Kelly in the first half of the 1880s, had his players run the bases in a way that forced the opposition into making errors. An aggressive captain and manager, he regularly helped players play better, and his contributions helped make baseball a higher-quality sport, while at the same time making it more popular with fans.
Anson was well known to be a racist and refused to play in exhibition games versus dark-skinned players. Despite this, Anson remained very popular in Chicago while playing for the White Stockings, which were increasingly known as the Colts starting with an influx of new players in the mid-1880s. Anson signed a ten year contract in 1888 to manage the White Stockings (which, because of a typographical error he failed to spot, ended after the 1897 season instead of the 1898 one), but his best years were behind him. Eliminating the 60 walks Anson received that year would drop his hit total to 2,995 according to statistics officially recognized by Major League Baseball.
After retirement
Anson briefly made a return to baseball managing the New York Giants in June and July of 1898, but fully retired afterward. After an unsuccessful attempt at owning/managing a semi-pro team, Anson began touring on the vaudeville circuit, which lasted up until about a year before his death.
Anson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939, one of the first 19th-century players selected.
Popular culture
Anson was mentioned in the Simpsons episode Homer at the Bat, by Mr. Burns, while looking for professional ringers for his power plant softball team.
User Comments Add a comment…