Both Sides of the Box: Two Book Reviews of Uncle Robbie

Abstract

Uncle Robbie Chuck Partington Jack Kavanagh and Norman Macht. Uncle Robbie. Cleveland OH: Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), 1999. 200 pp. Paper, $12.95. In 1945, the Committee on Old-Timers voted Wilbert Robinson into baseball's Hall of Fame. "Uncle Robbie," as he was known by his peers, was selected for his managerial skills. He had managed in the majors for nineteen years, all but one with Brooklyn. Although he managed in 2,819 games, his winning percentage was exactly .500, not an impressive record when compared to other managers who are in the Hall of Fame. He did lead the Brooklyn team to two pennants, in 1916 and 1920, but they lost to the Red Sox and the Indians in the World Series. In his book on managers, The Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers from 1870 to Today, Bill James ranks Robinson forty-fifth on his list (tied with Chuck Tanner). So the question remains, what was there about Robinson ' s career, which spanned more than forty years, and two centuries, that compelled the committee to choose him as a member of the Hall of Fame? In their biography of Robinson, entitled Uncle Robbie, baseball historians Jack Kavanagh and Norman Macht offer a chronological narrative of Robinson's career as a player and manager. (Kavanagh, who died in 1999, was working on the biography when illness forced him to ask for assistance from his friend and longtime collaborator Macht. Together, they finished the book.) "Robbie" was a catcher and team captain of the original Baltimore Orioles, the team that was known for its "scientific baseball" and dirty play and won three consecutive pennants in the National League in the last decade of the nineteenth century. When his playing career ended in 1904, Robinson ran a meat market and a café he had opened some years before in Baltimore with John McGraw. However, baseball was in his blood, and he was soon back in the game, hired by his friend McGraw as a coach for the New York Giants. He was with the Giants for five seasons when he and McGraw had a falling out over an incident in the 1913 World Series. The following year, he was hired to manage Brooklyn by Charlie Ebbets, who owned the team. For the next eighteen years, Robinson was at the helm of the team that became known as "the Robins." As Burt Solomon put it in his study of the old Orioles, Where They Ain't: "Robbie did an honorable job, too often with dismal teams." Kavanagh and Macht do a decent enough job describing the details of Robinson's long career, including his relationship with McGraw when they both were with the Orioles and Giants; his development of pitchers, especially Burleigh Grimes and Dazzy Vance; and his handling of Babe Herman, who was [End Page 153] the daffiest of all the Dodgers. What's missing, however, is any real assessment of Robinson's managerial skills, especially since he is in the Hall of Fame. Was he, like his contemporary McGraw, a skillful strategist? As a disciple of Ned Hanlon, his manager at Baltimore, how did he compare with others whom Hanlon had mentored? During Robinson's long tenure with Brooklyn, the role of the manager changed tremendously, especially in game strategies and administrative duties. (For a good discussion of this, see Bill James's Guide to Baseball Managers, especially the period 1910-30.) Addressing these and other similar questions would have made this a more solid biography and maybe would have helped us understand better why he was selected to the Hall of Fame. It is evident that the authors researched and collected a mass of material in order to write this book. They did research in eight libraries and research facilities and scoured the major newspapers of the period for information on the subject and his era. It would have been helpful if they had identified more closely the use of those sources in the text. This volume cries out for footnotes. Finally, I assume that there must not be a collection of Robinson papers and memorabilia since none are mentioned in the text or in the...