Bad Bill Dahlen (review)

A century ago, Bill Dahlen roamed the "short field" for John McGraw's defending World Champion New York Giants. A fifteen-year veteran, Dahlen was then regarded as one of the best shortstops of his time, perhaps of all time. All these many years later, he remains outside the hallowed walls of the Hall of Fame. Should he be in? Lyle Spatz believes he should and makes the case for Dahlen's enshrinement in his latest book.

Dahlen was a fine player. Just how fine is a matter of debate. At his best, he was one of the two top shortstops in the National League for most of the 1890s, and the second best behind the peerless Honus Wagner during the first few years of the twentieth century. Unlike Wagner, he battled umpires, skipped games without sufficient cause, and at times treated the sport with indifference or worse. His attitude problems tempered the effects of his otherwise splendid play, earning him the moniker "Bad Bill." His four years as Brooklyn manager following his playing career were neither memorable nor successful. Within a couple of decades after leaving the game, Dahlen was a forgotten man.

That's where things might have rested forever were it not for the efforts of a number of members of the Society of American Baseball Research (sabr), Spatz among them. Those researchers have resurrected Dahlen's memory, principally by means of statistical studies showing that his career numbers, taken in historical context, compare favorably with those of many Hall of Famers. Spatz, who has served as chairman of sabr's Baseball Records Committee for the past fifteen years, is as aware of this as anyone, which might have inspired him to undertake the research and writing of Dahlen's biography.

Spatz's narrative begins with a brief sketch of his subject's early days in Nelliston, New York, followed by a much more extensive account of the beginnings of Dahlen's Major League career with Cap Anson's Chicago nine in 1891. Dahlen spent eight years in Chicago, seven of them under Anson, followed by five seasons under Ned Hanlon in Brooklyn and four with John McGraw in New York. All of those clubs were successful, and Dahlen was instrumental to their success. Each team improved after he joined it, as did the Boston Bees for whom he had his last productive season in 1908. Even the woeful Brooklyn club improved a tad during his years as a manager, although they progressed much more swiftly under his successor, Wilbert Robinson.

As Spatz demonstrates in his brief final chapter, Dahlen's statistical record bears out the SABRites' veneration of him. However, his overall performance, including multiple ejections and a disturbing number of no-shows, leaves the reader more doubtful. To Spatz's credit, he makes no excuses for Dahlen, acknowledging that his subject's temper and other foibles cost his team valuable games and that he was a less-than-stellar role model in many respects. As team captain of the Chicago nine in 1898, he contrived to get himself ejected from a league-high ten games, which Statz rightly regards as "a shameful amount for any player, but especially disgraceful for a team captain." Summing up that season as "very much a microcosm of his career," Statz notes that Dahlen was "an outstanding player on the field" but that "his ostensibly disinterested attitude, thoughtless escapades, poor judgment, and generally sophomoric behavior made him a less than desirable teammate."

Spatz does a commendable job in recounting Dahlen's baseball career. That effort occupies almost the entire volume; little is revealed concerning Dahlen's life before or after Major League baseball. The book is generally well written, but the narrative is occasionally hard to follow. For example, there is an offhand reference to a daughter on page 54, although Dahlen's first marriage and the girl's birth aren't mentioned until page 106. More typically, Spatz's narrative ranges back and forth between events in a manner that leaves...