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Home > Baseball > MLB Hall of Famers > John McGraw
John McGraw
Baseball is an outdoor sport in which a pitcher pitches a hard, fist sized ball to the hitting area of a batter. The batter hits the hard ball with a tapered, smooth, cylindrical bat made up of wood or metal. The batsman scores by running counter-clockwise within the four markers called the bases arranged at the corners of a diamond. Baseball is sometimes called hardball to differentiate it from similar games such as softball.
John McGraw was born on Monday, April 7, 1873, in Truxton, New York. McGraw was 18 years old when he broke into the big leagues on August 26, 1891, with the Baltimore Orioles. For many years John McGraw was the dominant figure in American baseball. He was an excellent player certainly the best ever to become a great manager yet his success derived from more than athletic talent.
His personality was indeed that of a Little Napoleon arrogant, abrasive, and pugnacious. He outgeneraled his opponents while abusing them verbally and, sometimes, with his fists. His players suffered his tyranny as the price of victory, proud to be Giants. In his 29 full seasons as Giants manager he finished first or second 21 times, winning 10 pennants and three World Series.
McGraw's Giants won three consecutive pennants from 1911 to 1913, but lost the WS, World Series all three years, twice to the Athletics and once to the Red Sox. In 1912 WS featured Fred Snodgrass's famous dropped fly ball, which allowed the Red Sox to rally for two runs in the 10th inning of the final game. McGraw lost another WS, World Series to the White Sox in 1917, and then rattled off four consecutive pennants beginning in 1921. By then, the Yankees were emerging as an AL, American League dynasty, but the Giants beat their Bronx rivals in 1921 and 1922, before the Yankees returned the favor in 1923.
McGraw unwittingly hastened his own demise by urging wealthy Jake Ruppert to buy the Yankees, ushering in the Ruthian long-ball era. The Yankees quickly established themselves as the city's dominant team, and the Giants were overtaken by the Pirates, Cardinals, and Cubs in their own league. In 1932 McGraw surrendered the manager's reins to Bill Terry, retiring with 2,840 victories. He returned in 1933 to manage the NL squad in the inaugural All-Star Game.
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