William Henry Watkins (May 5, 1858 – June 9, 1937), sometimes known as "Wattie," or "Watty," was a Canadian-born professional baseball player, manager, executive, and team owner whose career in organized baseball spanned 47 years from 1876 to 1922.
He began playing organized baseball in Canada and Michigan and played one season of Major League Baseball as an infielder for the Indianapolis Hoosiers in 1884. He was a manager of five major league clubs and several minor league clubs, including stints with the Indianapolis Hoosiers (1884–85), Detroit Wolverines (1885–1888), Kansas City Cowboys (1888–89), St. Louis Browns (1893), and Pittsburgh Pirates (1898–99). He led the 1887 Detroit Wolverines to the first professional sports championship for Detroit with a National League pennant and a victory over the St. Louis Browns in the 1887 World Series. He was also the business manager of the 1914 Indianapolis Hoosiers team that won the Federal League pennant, the first and only major league baseball championship for Indianapolis.
Early years Watkins was born in Brantford, Canada West, in 1858. His parents, John Harton Watkins and Eliza Jane (Tyler) Watkins, were immigrants to Canada from Wales and Ireland, respectively. His mother died in 1868, and he was thereafter raised by his maternal grandparents in Erin, Ontario. Watkins attended Upper Canada College in Toronto for one year, and he began playing organized baseball in 1876 as part of "the academy team" in Milton, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto. He also held jobs as an apprentice for a manufacturer of novelty games and with a branch of the Ingles Corliss Engine Works.Watkins' obituary in the Port Huron Times Herald, June 10, 1937. In 1879, at age 21, Watkins moved to Port Huron, Michigan, where he lived for the next 40 years.
Professional baseball
Guelph and St. Thomas (1879–81) From 1879 to 1880, Watkins played for the Maple Leafs of Guelph in Southwestern Ontario. The Maple Leafs won the Canadian amateur championship while Watkins was a player. In 1881 and/or 1882, he was a player-manager for the Atlantic Club of St. Thomas, Ontario (part of the London, Ontario metropolitan area). He led the Athletics to the Ontario provincial baseball championship in 1881.
Port Huron and Bay City (1882-84) Watkins joined the Port Huron, Michigan baseball club late in the 1882 season. In 1883, he served as player-manager for the Port Huron club, playing at third base and leading the club to a Michigan State League championship.
In September 1883, Watkins was hired to take over as manager of the Bay City, Michigan club for the 1884 season at a salary of $2,000. He led Bay City to a tie for first place in the Northwest League when the team disbanded in July 1884.
Indianapolis, Part I (1884) On August 1, 1884, Watkins made his major league debut with the Indianapolis Hoosiers of the American Association. Watkins appeared in 34 games, 23 at third base, nine at second base and two at shortstop. Watkins also took over as the Hoosiers' manager, compiling a 4–18 record.
On August 26, 1884, Watkins was hit on the head by a pitch from Gus Shallix, at Cincinnati. The Cincinnati Enquirer described the incident as follows:With two out, Watkins came to bat and fell a victim to one of the swift curves of Shallix. The poor fellow ducked his head, but it was too late, and the ball caught him on the temple. He rolled over into the diamond, while a thrill of horror passed through the hearts of those in the stands. He was half carried, writhing nervously with pain, to the directors' room, where it was found that though the shock to his system had been great, no bones were broken.
Newspaper accounts indicate that he "hovered between life and death" for five days. It took two weeks for him to recover, and during that time, he lost 16 pounds. Watkins returned briefly as a player after the injury, but his performance was substantially diminished. On September 14, 1884, Watkins' error at second base let in most of Baltimore's runs in a 4–4 tie game.("Errors by managers of the two clubs, Barnie and Watkins, in their respective positions, let in most of the runs.") He appeared in his final game as a player on October 13, 1884.
Newspaper stories published in 1912 in the Indianapolis Star and in 1937 in The Sporting News claimed that Watkins' hair turned prematurely white in 1884 due to the injury sustained when he was struck on the head. In his biography for the SABR Baseball Biography Project, Bill Lamb wrote that the story about Watkins' hair turning white appears to be "folklore", as "post-beaning photographs" (including the image displayed above) "show Watkins with reddish-brown hair and mustache until he was well into middle age."
Indianapolis, Part II (1885) In 1885, the Indianapolis club in the American Association disbanded. Along with Ted Sullivan, Tom Loftus, and George Tebeau, Watkins helped organize the original Western League, a minor league baseball circuit based in the Midwestern United States. A new version of the Indianapolis Hoosiers was established in the Western League with Watkins as the manager. In April 1885, The Sporting Life praised Watkins' effort in maintaining "rigid discipline", putting an end to the "carousals" of the prior year, and ridding the club of "the whiskey element" and noted that Watkins had become "the most popular and efficient manager the club has ever had."
By mid-June, the Hoosiers were the dominant team in the Western League, compiling an .880 winning percentage. However, the league disbanded in mid-June, and a rush developed to sign the players on the Indianapolis roster, a line-up that included Sam Thompson, Deacon McGuire, Sam Crane, Jim Donnelly, Chub Collins, Mox McQuery, Gene Moriarty, and Dan Casey.
Sam Thompson later told the colorful story of the Hoosiers' acquisition by Detroit. Detroit sent two representatives (Marsh and Maloney) to Indianapolis, principally to sign the Hoosiers' battery of Larry McKeon and Jim Keenan. The Wolverines were outbid by the Cincinnati Reds for McKeon and Keenan but wound up with Watkins and the rest of the team's starting lineup. The only catch was that a 10-day waiting period would allow other teams to outbid Detroit. Marsh and Maloney promptly sent the players to Detroit and quartered them in a hotel there. The next morning, the players were told that the team had arranged a fishing trip for them. The players boarded the steamship Annette and enjoyed the first day and night of successful fishing. After three days, the players became suspicious, but the ship captain laughed when asked when they would return to Detroit. As the players became mutinous on the sixth day, the captain admitted he had been ordered to keep them "out at sea" for 10 days. In another account, Thompson described his 10 days aboard the Annette as follows: We were prisoners, but well cared-for prisoners. Anything in the line of creature comforts you could find packed away on ice. We lived on the best in the market, and spent the rest of the time in fishing and playing poker, chips having very thoughtfully been provided. On the night of the tenth day, at midnight, we were all taken ashore where Watkins met us and signed us to our contracts.Fleitz, More Ghosts, p. 155. The players were only later presented with their accumulated mail which included scores of offers from other clubs. A writer in the Detroit Free Press noted: "Detroit magnates showed some inside baseball brains and great finessing in sending the players away from all tempters for that period when they belonged to no club."
Detroit (1885-88) When Watkins took over as manager of the Detroit Wolverines in June 1885, the team had compiled a 7–31 record to that point in the season. With the infusion of talent from Indianapolis, the team improved to 34–36 for the remainder of the 1885 season.
Late in the 1885 season, Detroit acquired four players from the Buffalo baseball club (Jack Rowe, Dan Brouthers, Hardy Richardson, and Deacon White) who were known as the "Big Four." The "Big Four" were "regarded for many years as the greatest quartette in the history of the national pastime." The "Big Four" joined Detroit for the 1886 season. With the addition of the "Big Four", the Wolverines improved substantially, finishing in second place with an 85–38 record in 1886.
The 1887 season was the pinnacle in the history of the Detroit Wolverines. The team was loaded with hitters, including six regulars who hit above .300: Sam Thompson (.372 and 166 RBIs in 127 games), Dan Brouthers (.338 and 101 RBIs in 123 games), Larry Twitchell (.333), Hardy Richardson (.328), Jack Rowe (.318) and Deacon White (.303). The pitching staff was led by "Pretzels" Getzien, a curveball specialist who compiled a 29–13 (.690) win–loss records and a 3.73 earned run average. Outfielder Larry Twitchell also started 12 games as pitcher and compiled an 11–1 record. The Wolverines won the National League pennant with a 79–45 record and then defeated the St. Louis Browns in the 1887 World Series.
During the 1888 season, the Wolverines fell to fifth place. In late August 1888, the Detroit club fired, or accepted the resignation of, Watkins as their manager, and Robert Leadley was hired as "acting manager" in his place. The Wolverines compiled a 49–44 record in their final year under Watkins.
Kansas City (1888–89) After parting ways with the Wolverines in late August 1888, Watkins was hired in early September 1888 as the manager of the Kansas City Cowboys of the American Association. He led the club to an 8–17 record in the final month of the 1888 season and a 55–82 record in 1889.
St. Paul (1890–91) In June 1890, Watkins was hired as the mid-season replacement manager for the St. Paul Apostles of the Western Association. Watkins had little success in turning the St. Paul club around, and in August 1890, The Sporting Life reported that Watkins had been forced to release players and cut salaries to reduce expenses, and that he was "running the St. Paul team economically according to instructions", though he hoped to have a stronger team in 1891. The Apostles finished in last place in 1890 with a 37–84 record.
In September 1890, with the St. Paul club losing money, C. L. Flatley, a personal friend of Watkins, purchased the club and promptly signed Watkins to serve as the club's manager again in 1891. However, Flatley had sold the club by December 1890. In June 1891, with the Apostles continuing to struggle financially and on the field, the club was sold and moved to Duluth, Minnesota. Two months later, in August 1891, the club disbanded, and Watkins was left with financial responsibility for half of the Duluth team's unpaid player salaries.
Rochester (1892) In April 1892, Watkins was hired as the manager of the Rochester Flour Cities in the Eastern League and was described by The Sporting Life as "a cuckoo" who "will not be handicapped by meddling directors." By the end of the season, the Rochester correspondent for The Sporting Life commended Watkins for his efforts with a "misfit team" that had a "scarcity of good men", was "badly crippled", suffered "internal dissension", and drew small crowds. The correspondent noted that Watkins had turned the club around with his emphasis on discipline: He has been as watchful of his men in the dark hours of the night as any man with self-respect could be, he has been always safe in his financial policy, his judgment of players has never gone wrong, he has been a stickler for finished team work ... He has been a dignified gentleman throughout and, considering the circumstances, the highest success as a manager... Local cranks will wish him unlimited success in every undertaking, and bear on with the hope that he may again pilot base ball in Rochester in 1893.
St. Louis (1893)