Clark Griffith

Clark Calvin Griffith (November 20, 1869 – October 27, 1955), nicknamed "the Old Fox", was an American Major League Baseball (MLB) pitcher, manager and team owner. He began his MLB playing career with the St. Louis Browns (1891), Boston Reds (1891), and Chicago Colts/Orphans (1893–1900). He then served as player-manager for the Chicago White Stockings (1901–1902) and New York Highlanders (1903–1907).

He retired as a player after the 1907 season, remaining manager of the Highlanders in 1908. He managed the Cincinnati Reds (1909–1911) and Washington Senators (1912–1920), making some appearances as a player with both teams. He owned the Senators from 1920 until his death in 1955. Sometimes known for being a thrifty executive, Griffith is also remembered for attracting talented players from the National League to play for the upstart American League when the Junior Circuit was in its infancy.

Griffith has the second-most ties by a manager in MLB history, with 59. He trails only Connie Mack, who has 76 ties and holds the record for managing the most games in MLB history, with a total of 7,755 games, 4,838 more than Griffith. Additionally, 25 managers have managed more games than Griffith’s 2,917, making the incidence of ties in his managerial career significantly higher than any other manager in Major League history.

Griffith was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1946.

Clark Calvin Griffith was born on November 20, 1869, in Clear Creek, Missouri, to Isaiah and Sarah Anne Griffith. His parents were of Welsh ancestry. They had lived in Illinois before Clark Griffith's birth. The family took a covered wagon west toward the Oklahoma Territory. Along the way, the family encountered hungry and disenchanted people returning from the Oklahoma Territory, so they decided to settle in Missouri. Griffith grew up with five siblings, four of them older.

When Griffith was a small child, his father was killed in a hunting accident when fellow hunters mistook him for a deer. Sarah Griffith struggled to raise her children as a widow, but Clark Griffith later said that his neighbors in Missouri had been very helpful to his mother, planting crops for her and the children. Fearing a malaria epidemic that was sweeping through the area, the Griffith family moved to Bloomington, Illinois.

A childhood incident taught him about the money side to baseball, Griffith recalled. When he was 13, he and a few other young boys had raised $1.25 to buy a baseball. They sent one of the boys 12 miles on horseback to make the purchase. The ball burst the second time that it was struck. Griffith later found out that the boy who purchased the ball only spent a quarter, keeping the leftover dollar. At the age of 17, Griffith had made $10 pitching in a local baseball game in Hoopeston, Illinois.

Griffith broke into organized baseball late in the 1887 with the local Bloomington club in the Central Interstate League. The following year, during an exhibition game against the Milwaukee Creams of the Western Association, Griffith so impressed Milwaukee manager Jim Hart that he offered the 18-year old a contract at $225 a month. Clark pitched for Milwaukee for three seasons before Charlie Comiskey convinced him to join the major leagues.