The Art of the Stolen Base

Brooklyn's Jackie Robinson brought back
Ty Cobb's mentality in the 1940s and 50s.
[Photo: John Rooney / AP]

By Bruce Jenkins
San Francisco Chronicle Columnist

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Viewed in a certain light, the major leagues' stolen-base history reads like fiction. Some numbers simply do not look real. The notion of "eras" can be vague in sports, but not here. Long before the A's Rickey Henderson set the modern record of 130 in 1982, baseball underwent tactical shifts of seismic proportions.

At the turn of the 20th century, a time most historians pinpoint as the birth of the modern game, the baseball was a primitive sphere that didn't travel so well and was kept in the ballgame until it began to unravel. At the power-starved low point of the Dead Ball Era (1900-1919), the 1908 Chicago White Sox hit just three home runs all season - and four the following year.

There wasn't much point in trying to clear the fences, so teams were built around speed, strategy and the manufacturing of runs. You weren't much use to the 1911 New York Giants if you couldn't run, and that team stole a mind-blowing 347 bases while hitting 41 homers.

Tigers great Ty Cobb always said that Clyde Milan, an outfielder for the Washington Senators, was the fastest baserunner he ever saw - showcased by Milan's league-leading 88 steals in 1912 and 75 the following year. But Cobb was the master, clearing the 60 mark six times from 1909 through 1916 and setting a long-standing record of 96 in 1915.

Ty Cobb, above, revolutionized the steal
a century ago, stealing 96 in 1915.

Cobb wasn't merely fast and aggressive; he was downright mean. He slid into the bases angry, with spikes high, often with intent to maim. His batting was legendary (.366 lifetime average), and he came to symbolize a roguish, rough-and-ready period in which gambling - in the stands, in the taverns and, yes, sometimes within the game itself - was commonplace.

Ruth changes the game


In February 1920, the owners agreed to employ a livelier ball, along with instructions to the umpires to keep a fresh ball in play at all times (one day in 1916, an entire game was played using one ball). Babe Ruth had shocked the baseball world with a record 29 homers the previous year, and he was about to change the game forever: 54 homers in 1920, a surrealistic feat akin to Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game.

It would be an understatement to suggest that Ruth was ahead of his time. As the Bambino ascended to 59 homers in the 1921 season, the National League leader (San Francisco-born George "High Pockets" Kelly) had 23 for the New York Giants. But a major transition was at hand. Why gamble on a base when you can yank the ball out of the park? In 1910, the American League's combined slugging average was .276; by 1922, it had climbed to .455.

In 1930, a statistically earth-shaking season in which the entire National League hit .303, only one man stole more than 18 bases. By 1932, the league leader had only 20. People talk about the St. Louis Cardinals' swashbuckling "Gas House Gang" in 1934, but their leading base stealer, Pepper Martin, had 23.

As World War II drew closer, the baserunning stats became almost comical. The Cubs' Stan Hack led the NL with 16 in 1938. As epic feats went down during the 1941 American League season (Ted Williams' .401 and Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak) a rookie named Danny Murtaugh, later to manage the Pittsburgh Pirates, led the National League with 18 steals.

Robinson revolution

You won't find any evidence on the stats sheet, but the most significant baserunning development of the post-war era was Jackie Robinson's dismantling of the color barrier with the 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers. In those days, and throughout the 1950s, the art was defined by timing, presence, taking the extra base - something earned, not stolen. Barring the element of great urgency, it was considered "showboating" to make spectacle of the steal.

Robinson had more presence on the bases than anyone since Cobb - and to say the least, his brand of defiance carried infinitely deeper meaning. "He was center stage, and wherever he walked, center stage moved with him," wrote Roger Kahn in "The Boys of Summer." Standing at first base, "balanced evenly on the balls of both feet, he took an enormous lead. There was no action, only two men throwing hard looks. The cry in the grandstands rose. And Robinson hopped a half-yard farther from first ... He could steal home, or advance two bases on someone else's bunt, and at the time of decision, when he slid, the big dark body became a bird in flight."

Robinson became the idol of countless aspiring ballplayers, all of them respectful of stolen-base etiquette. Even with the young Willie Mays on board, the New York Giants totaled only 129 stolen bases from the 1952 season through '55. It wasn't until 1956, when Mays led the league with 40, that any NL player had cleared 35 in that decade.

The next face in the stolen-base pantheon was Luis Aparicio, the great White Sox shortstop. He led the AL in each of his first nine seasons, including a dazzling 56 in 1959, crafting his magic largely out of necessity. Home runs might have been the rage in Yankee Stadium, Seals Stadium (home of the Giants) and County Stadium (Milwaukee), but Aparicio played on hustling, scrappy teams that came to be known as the "Go-Go Sox." (And even at that, the '59 World Series team stole all of 113 bases total.)

Mays amazes

Still, it all came back to Mays. He was, and remains, the greatest baserunner anyone ever saw. The smartest, the most exciting, the most disruptive - you name the category. DiMaggio certainly had his backers, just for the utter perfection of his game, but the stolen base wasn't his thing: 30 in his 13-year career (you read that right), and none over the course of 51 World Series games.

DiMaggio was a connoisseur's delight, but Mays made fans out of people who didn't know a thing about baseball. They couldn't take their eyes off him. Dancing off second on a grounder to the shortstop or third, Mays routinely would take third - whether the fielder "looked" him back to second or fired to first. "The Mays Play," they called it, impossible to defend. And if you caught him in a rundown, he'd make it last until the batter reached second.

It was common to see Mays' cap fly off his head on the bases, but as Charles Einstein wrote in "Willie's Time," the act was "nothing artificial or contrived. It was not just the innate speed of Mays, but the way he could shift gears and suddenly turn on like an afterburner."

In a 1961 game at Philadelphia's Connie Mack Stadium, Mays shocked the Phillies, the fans and even the most seasoned writers by scoring from first on a groundball single to left by Orlando Cepeda. Mays could be tough, as well: That same year, against Cincinnati, Mays was on third when Ed Bailey hit a bases-loaded, one-out grounder to first. Gordy Coleman fielded it and stepped on the bag, then threw home, meaning there was no force play on Mays. It would have to be a tag - and Mays made sure it didn't happen.

"The visual memory I retain is that (Cincinnati catcher Jerry) Zimmerman exploded upon contact," Einstein wrote. "The ball, the glove, the mask, and several pieces of Zimmerman appeared to disassemble in midair, like the cat in a Looney Toons cartoon." 

Wills thrills

At this stage of the game's history, nothing had approached the base-stealing frenzy perfected by Cobb, Eddie Collins, Honus Wagner and other greats of the Dead Ball era. But then came a switch-hitting Dodgers shortstop named Maury Wills.

Unlike the fearsome Giants, the Dodgers were a light-hitting bunch that depended upon the lights-out pitching of Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale. In their minds, it might as well have been 1911. One run at a time: Say, a walk to Wills, a steal of second, a sacrifice bunt by Jim Gilliam, and a sacrifice fly by Willie Davis.

There was nothing terribly unusual about the 1961 stolen-base leaders. The list spoke magnificently of the times: 35 for Wills, 23 for Vada Pinson, 22 for Frank Robinson, 21 for Henry Aaron, 18 for Mays. But in 1962, Wills went on a tear and didn't look back. His final total, 104, was downright inconceivable. It more than twice the total of eight teams that year.

Brock and beyond

As such, a new era was launched. Lou Brock broke Wills' record with 118 for the 1974 Cardinals. With all of the old-school codes forsaken, the 70-plus-steal season became commonplace (Dave Lopes, Willie Wilson, several others) as the decade progressed, and this was the backdrop to Henderson's debut. Like all the great ones, from Cobb to Robinson to Wills, Rickey left impressions that spread well beyond the printed page.

Bruce Jenkins is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. 

bjenkins@sfchronicle.com