Commy
Reviewed by Keith Cannon, Department of Communication, Wingate University
JUNE 23, 2005 archive
If the modern-day baseball fan knows Charles A. Comiskey (1859-1931) at all, it’s through the filter of popular culture. In the book and movie Eight Men Out and other re-tellings of the “Black Sox” scandal of the 1919 World Series, Comiskey is the skinflint owner of the Chicago White Sox whose unwillingness to pay his players competitive salaries leads some of them to conspire with gamblers to fix the outcome of the Series with the Cincinnati Reds.
In this contemporary biography by Chicago sportswriter G.W. Axelson, released just months before that World Series, the reader gets, if not a more accurate portrait, at least a different one. Axelson’s book is billed as one of the rarer finds in McFarland’s Historical Baseball Library series and is edited by Marty McGee and Gary Mitchem.
Remarkably, it’s the only biography of Comiskey, a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, ever published. The approach is far from the “warts-and-all” portrayal to which sports figures have become accustomed in modern times, filled with glowing testimonials from friend and even foe. But through the cloud of hagiography, some insights emerge.
Before he became owner of the White Sox in his native Chicago, Comiskey was an innovative player and a successful manager in professional baseball’s early days. According to Axelson, Comiskey essentially invented the modern way to play first base in his 13 big-league seasons as a player. He fielded his position almost like an outfielder, ranging far “off the bag” in an era when most infielders stayed squarely on or close to the bases.
As a player-manager, he led the St. Louis Browns, then of the American Association, to four straight pennants (1885-1888) and won more than 800 games in a managerial career that ended in 1894. Comiskey then spent a few years as owner of a minor league team in St. Paul, MN before becoming one of the founding fathers of the American League, along with its first president, Ban Johnson. Comiskey’s White Sox were regular contenders in the new league, winning four league championships and the 1906 and 1917 World Series. Comiskey built and put his name on one of the major leagues’ first great ballparks in 1910, which served as home of the Sox for the next 80 years.
Axelson’s portrait of Comiskey as an owner paints him as something like the George Steinbrenner of his time – minus the megalomania. Contrary to his modern-day reputation for penury, he was willing to loosen the purse strings to sign a player who could help the team, and Axelson says, he was the first owner to commission special trains to carry his players across the country. Further, baseball researchers have found that the White Sox payroll was not much different from that of other teams of that era. Like The Boss of the New York Yankees, he wouldn’t hesitate to publicly or privately criticize the performance of a player or manager or suggest player moves or lineup changes. (Of course, unlike Steinbrenner, Comiskey had the baseball credentials to make the interference credible.)
Given the timing of its release, the book is suffused with irony, especially in a concluding section of the book where Axelson lets “The Old Roman” himself speak. (The nickname comes from Comiskey’s statue-like profile.) Comiskey calls baseball, which had an unsavory reputation in its earliest days for drunkenness and gambling among players, “as honorable as any other business.” He says, “It is the most honest pastime in the world. It has to be or it would not last the season out. Crookedness and baseball do not mix.”
Of course, they soon did, changing the legacy of a man who said of himself, “What I have tried to do is my level best.” In addition to providing a fuller portrait of Comiskey, Axelson’s account of the early days of baseball is also valuable for giving the reader an introduction to some now nearly-forgotten people and events in baseball history. For example, Axelson profiles colorful but clueless Chris Von der Ahe, the owner of the Browns when Comiskey was a player and manager. He was a shrewd marketer, one of the first of the beer magnates who used the old ball game to sell his product. But he was out of his element trying to run a baseball team.
There are also several chapters on an around-the-world barnstorming tour after the 1913 season by Comiskey’s White Sox and John McGraw’s San Francisco Giants, with rosters supplemented by players from other big-league teams. A similar world tour had been undertaken under the leadership of Albert G. Spalding in 1888. It was an undertaking remarkable for its time – or any time, and the traveling troupe played in front of King George V in London and to curious crowds in Japan, Australia, Egypt and China. (Readers may find the casual racism of the day a bit off-putting, as in his descriptions of “Nipponese top-knots” cheering on the teams in Japan.)
Both Von der Ahe and the world tour, if they haven’t already been subjects for contemporary research, should be. Modern readers of this book will have to be patient with Axelson’s discursive style and loose organization, but it’s worth a look for its look at a formative period and an instrumental figure in baseball’s past.
Axelson, G.W. “Commy”: The Life Story of Charles A. Comiskey. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2003. [Originally published Chicago: Reilly &Lee, 1919]. 240 pp. ISBN 0-7864-1598-3.
Copyright © 2005 by Keith Cannon.