Did Oskaloosa Throw Games?
by Mike Comfort
As the league moved from May to June, attendance for the league games averaged 300-400 fans, while Sunday averages jumped to 800. Burlington was on top for Sunday games, averaging 2000 fans a game, while Boone led with 468 for the other days. Burlington’s attendance made them attractive to the Three I League, as they discussed adding Burlington, but nothing came of the rumors. Combining Sunday games and other games, Marshalltown came on top with 513. Marshalltown played two games during the month in front of 1400 and 3000 fans respectively. Sometimes games were not played for unusual reasons. Keokuk and Boone postponed a game because Boone had to make the train, while Marshalltown and Burlington chose to not play a game because a circus was using the field. By mid June the league was being dominated by pitchers as only 7 players had an average above .300, the highest being CF Gray of Keokuk at .383 through 17 games.
The Oskaloosa Quakers continued to struggle. After losing their first three games of the season enroute to a 7-14 mark in the month of May, the second month didn’t get any better as they went a paltry 6-20, including two 8 game losing streaks, which placed them at 13-34 entering July. The Oskaloosa Herald noted “Oskaloosa continues to lose with a persistence that can not be otherwise than discouraging to the town and its people” and the “Club has represented the town shamefully”. Things were looking so poor for Oskaloosa that their team was almost dropped in favor of Muscatine. In response to their poor play, the team doubled the stock, and gave $500 to the team to turn their fortunes around. The Oskaloosa Herald praised the team and stated “Oskaloosa’s support of her club through thick and thin has been the wonder of the other cities of the league”. The Ottumwa Courier added “Holding down the bottom rung of the percentage ladder as if with an unrelenting persistency, the Oskaloosa club has never been without the heartiest support of its fans”. This was evident by the 1500 fans that showed up to watch a July 4th game that saw Oskaloosa win in 12 innings 3-2 over Ottumwa. Thus, the Iowa League dodged their first threat of a franchise going under. Unfortunately for the Quakers, the new funding did not help the fortunes of the team. They would continue to struggle for the rest of the season finishing near the bottom of the standings.
This is where the story takes an interesting and unexpected turn. The September 15, 1904 Oskaloosa Herald dedicated a large section to a season write-up on the Quakers. It included game results and summaries of the season series with each team in the Iowa League. During the review of games against Marshalltown, the paper wrote “We laid down to them in one game when some of the local team had it in for Manager Tiley and they were permitted to run in eighteen men and shut Oskaloosa out.” The article seems to imply that the team ‘laid down’ or threw a game in order to get the manager fired. This is quite the shocking statement to share so nonchalantly in an end of season review and the comment is not elaborated on further by the paper. Now certainly in the history of baseball teams have thrown games, including the infamous 1919 World Series, so maybe the allegation shouldn’t be so surprising. However, the question is, did it actually happen in this instance? In order to answer this question, the box scores and write ups from those games must be examined. The game referred to in the write up was the final game of a three game series played from June 27-29 at Oskaloosa. Marshalltown swept Oskaloosa with Oskaloosa accumulating 19 errors in the series, including 11 in the game in question. On first look, this is certainly a suspicious amount of poor play which backs up the accusation that the team was trying to throw games to get their manager fired. However, there is one problem here – Oskaloosa actually fired their manager two weeks before this game! The June 17, 1904 Marshalltown Times notes that Oskaloosa Manager Tiley was given his release on June 16, conjecturing this was due to “continual losses’. So, that seems to settle it, the Quakers couldn’t have thrown the June 29th game to fire their manager because they had already fired Tiley. That is a fact. But what if the paper had the date wrong? Is there an earlier game that shines suspicion on the Quakers?
Oskaloosa and Marshalltown had played 6 games prior to that late June series. Oskaloosa had taken 2 of 3 at home in early May, while Marshalltown had swept a series at Marshalltown in early June. A closer look at the June 10-12 series brings questions about some of the play. The headline of the June 11 Marshalltown Times for the June 10 game is quite direct “Bum Ball Costs One: Quakers’ Costly Errors and (Marshalltown’s) Timely Hitting Gives Grays First of Series.” Some other snippets from the article:
“The Quakers usually steady and staid got wobbly and committed almost every sin known in the fielding decalogue.”
“….the bum back-lot play they (Quakers) put up.”
“What the Grays did not earn, the Quakers gave to them on bad miscues.”
Tiley “fumbled it”, “Bradshaw saw it coming, fell down, and got up just in time to muff the ball.”
“Bruggeman’s hit went through Kensel”. Tiley “dropped the throw”.
“Two more errors were made in the eighth ………but they cost nothing”
The Quakers 7 errors by 5 players dug them a 6-0 hole, before they lost 6-2 after scoring 2 in the 9th. It should be noted that Tiley himself made 2 of the errors. Was this just a bad game, which happens all too often during a baseball season or was this a deliberate scheme? Well, let’s examine the remaining two games of the series. The June 13, 1904 Marshalltown Times has a writeup for both games that occurred on the weekend. The headline cuts right to the point:
“(Marshalltown) Take Three Straight”
“Grays have no trouble winning entire series from Oskaloosa”
“Visitors play poor ball”
“Quakers were entirely outclassed by Grays, aided by visitors misplays”
The write up questions how Marshalltown could have lost two games to Oskaloosa in May based on Oskaloosa’s play in June. The author notes “it is even money the high school team could give them a rub” and the “Quaker outfit is certainly the worst ever.” More tidbits:
“The visitors could neither field the ball, nor run the bases.”
“The visitors errors altho frequent”.
“Misplays and errors punctuated the second of the series with the Quakers almost as frequently as the first and allowed the locals to run away with the game.”
The Quakers would get swept in the 3 game series by scores of 6-2, 6-1, and 4-0 and they would make 18 errors in the series. The write up from the games make it clear that errors played a major part in the losses, even specifically mentioning that only 2 of the 6 runs scored by Marshalltown in game 2 were earned. After examining the games, the poor play of the Quakers certainly matches the expected performance of a team that would be throwing a game. With that said, the Quakers played poorly the entire year. Did their play in that series differentiate from their usual subpar performance? One way to look at that question is to see if the number of errors in that series was significantly different from their typical play. In the 8 games before that series (June 1-9), Oskaloosa averaged 2.4 errors per game, with a high of 4. In this 3 game series, Oskaloosa committed 7, 6, and 5 errors. Oskaloosa then committed 4, 4, and 3 errors in the next 3 games, at which point Manager Tiley was relieved of duty. In the first 9 games under the new manager, Oskaloosa averaged 2.2 errors per game with a high of 4. These numbers indicate that the Quakers were abnormally sloppy even by their standards of play during that series, then they reverted back to their normal play when Tiley was fired. This certainly leads more credence to the rumors of them throwing games. Still, it is possible that the Quakers were just a horrible team having a really horrible series. More evidence is needed to determine if anything nefarious was going on. Does more evidence exist? Well yes, it does.
Looking through contemporary sources, there are two other instances that referred to the Quakers potentially throwing games. The July 7 edition of the Oskaloosa Herald notes in an article discussing the new stock offerings that “Players (Quakers) have ‘laid down,’ games have been given away and attempts made to wreck the team more than once.” It is interesting that the author uses the word ‘games’ instead of ‘game’, which insinuates that the Quakers had thrown multiple games. Further research to pinpoint these games has proven unsuccessful, so it is possible that this comment is directed at the June 10-12 Marshalltown series already discussed. A second instance came from the Waterloo Courier after a write up of an Oskaloosa-Waterloo game. The paper stated “I don’t know whether there is any truth in the report that Oskaloosa gave Ottumwa a recent game or not. But I wouldn’t put it past Donahue (new manager) and his men in order that the pennant may be kept in the southern part of the state.” Now, it’s important to note that Ottumwa and Waterloo were in a battle for the pennant, a battle that Ottumwa would win by 5 games. Thus, it is possible that this is just sour grapes from the Waterloo fanbase as Ottumwa was closing in on the pennant. With that said, let’s look through the game logs to see if this alleged game can be pinpointed. The challenging issue with this accusation is that a specific date is not mentioned – the article just says ‘recent game.’ Looking at the game logs, Oskaloosa and Ottumwa played just 3 times between July 4th and August 26 (the date of the article): July 21 (make up from July 7), August 8, and August 22 (makeup from August 9). Oskaloosa won the July 21 matchup while Ottumwa won the other two, thus it seems that the latter two games are the games to examine.
Fortunately, the Marshalltown Times has brief write ups on both games. In the August 8 game, it was noted that Ottumwa outhit Oskaloosa 11-5 and built a 7-0 lead before winning 7-2. Oskaloosa only had 2 errors in the game. The August 22 game, seems more promising in terms of providing evidence for a thrown game. Ottumwa won 11-2 with their play described as ‘almost perfect’ while Oskaloosa’s effort was described as ‘listless play and errors on (their) part’. On top of that, the write up closes with the line “Kennedy (Ottumwa manager) was there to win with Donahue’s (Oskaloosa manager) aid, and he did, further substantiating the prediction made in the Times-Republican last week.” There is a lot to unpack from those sentences. First, the play of Oskaloosa was poor enough to invite suspicion of a game being thrown. Second, the last sentence seems to outwardly imply that Oskaloosa’s manager Donahue explicitly gave the game to Ottumwa. Further inspection, however, seems to shed light on a different story. The prediction noted in the last sentence of the Marshalltown Times article refers to an article from the same paper on August 20. In it, the paper notes that Ottumwa’s manager Kennedy is refusing to make up postponed games to teams that are in the top half of the league even if those teams are in town. In fact he turned down playing Marshalltown on the same day he played Oskaloosa even though those two teams were already finishing up a regularly scheduled series. Most likely, he decided to play a make-up game with Oskaloosa because they were in last and would be an easier opponent as opposed to there being a nefarious plot to throw games. Ultimately, when examining the claims of Oskaloosa throwing a game to Ottumwa, no definite conclusion can be drawn. Oskaloosa’s play was poor enough to attract suspicion, and Ottumwa’s conduct raises some red flags. On the other hand, the claims could just be jealous rumor spreading of teams who wouldn’t win the pennant and who are upset with Ottumwa’s means of making up postponed games to win a championship.
So, did the Oskaloosa Quakers throw games during the 1904 season? Unfortunately, no assured conclusion can be drawn. Oskaloosa’s play was suspiciously bad for the rumored games thrown, even beyond their usual poor play, which seems to justify accusations. On the other hand, logical reasons can be made to excuse their performances in those games. The firing of Tiley was not the last time he was on the same field with Oskaloosa in the 1904 season. After his firing, Tiley was hired as an umpire and quickly created a reputation as a poor umpire. The Waterloo Courier called him the worst umpire in the Iowa League and that he needed to go to the ‘optician’s office’. On August 25, Waterloo and Oskaloosa met for a game with Tiley as the umpire. With the game tied at 5, Oskaloosa disputed a call by Tiley on a double play and forfeited the game. The Oskaloosa Herald said that the Quakers “refused to submit to Mr. Tiley’s evident unfairness in umpiring.”
As for the games in June, Waterloo had the best record of any team as they went 19-6, which got them above .500 (22-20), but only good enough to be in 5th place. Despite suffering a 7 game losing streak at the beginning of the month, Ottumwa held on to the top spot at 26-16, mostly due to an 11-3 stretch to end the month. In fact as the month ended they were in the middle of a 10 game win streak that carried over into July. Fort Dodge (26-17) and Marshalltown (22-18) held the 2nd and 3rd spots respectively. An 8-12 stretch in the middle of June kept Keokuk in 4th place (22-19), while a 4-12 run placed Boone in 6th (19-23). Burlington had a 5 game win streak in the middle of the month, but followed that with a 3-10 stretch that kept them in next to last (18-25). Oskaloosa, as mentioned above, was still stuck in the cellar at 13-30. As June came to an end, league officials said the league was in great condition and they looked forward to the second half of the season.
Sources
Marshalltown Times, Ottumwa Courier, Waterloo Courier, Oskaloosa Herald, Muscatine Journal, Baseball-Reference, Iowa State League Game Logs
This article is copyright Mike Comfort and used with his permission. You can read more at his Substack by clicking HERE.
Mike Comfort is an Oskaloosa native as well as a baseball and history buff. He resides in Oskaloosa and is an educator and coach.
