Eligible: 1880
Contributions: Pro baseball's first recognizable slugger, McVey hit .346 lifetime with a 152 career OPS+.
In an era of downplayed offensive ability, offensive stars are hard to find. Rarer were men who were consistently valuable hitters - often a guy could hit .400 then disappear back to his local semi-pro league and from the history books altogether. Much rarer still is a man who could wield a valuable bat, year-in and year-out, and the first player to really be that guy is baseball's first consistent power hitter, Cal McVey. More than that, McVey was a baseball pioneer, a phenom who straddled the gap between the amateur era and the professional sport, and who was on-hand to watch it all unfold.
As a young boy Calvin was a gifted athlete, known regionally as a talented gymnast and boxer. His first love, as an athlete, was baseball, though at the time of his growing up baseball was a game, a hobby for boys and young men - the professional game was still developing. His athleticism would be a hallmark of his career, and he would become known for celebratory handstands and backflips later in his career.
In 1867 McVey was working as a piano maker in Indianapolis and playing amateur ball with two clubs, the Actives and the Westerns, a semi-pro outfit known as one of the best in the western United States. When the Washington Nationals stopped in Indianapolis as part of their worldbeating national tour (see the Al Spalding entry) they took on the Westerns in a highly-anticipated matchup of championship clubs. While the Nationals won (as they always did on their tour), the 16-year-old McVey put on a strong showing and impressed not just the Nationals, but their attached reporter and scorekeeper, Henry Chadwick, who spread the word of the talented young man to his readers nationally.
In the spring of 1869, largely in response to the success of the '67 Nationals, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, led by baseball legend Harry Wright, went openly pro. Wright and the Reds recruited heavily from the east coast (Bill James notes that most pro baseball players at the time came from Baltimore, Philadelphia, or Brooklyn), but he saved one spot for a young man he had heard about from Indianapolis. When William McVey signed for his 17-year-old son, Calvin became the youngest player in professional baseball, and the first pro ballplayer born west of the Mississippi.
Athletic and handsome, thick in chest and shoulder, McVey was a hit immediately and, the papers reported, "a favourite of the ladies." Fleet of foot and with a strong throwing arm, McVey was a talented right fielder, but as one paper wrote: "His strength is with the ash in his hands."
The 1869 season was a wild ride for the young man. After defeating all of their midwest opposition, the Reds took off for a tour of the east. Much to the surprise of the baseball establishment, the east had no answer for the hayseeds from Cincinnati and the Reds went undefeated. After they destroyed the Nationals in Washington, the Reds were invited to the White House, and 18-year-old McVey shook hands with Civil War hero and sitting president Ulysses S Grant. Still searching for a challenge, the club headed west. On the coach to Omaha, Reds shortstop George Wright, younger brother to Harry and unanimous pick for the best player in baseball history to that point sat up front with the driver, and asked McVey to sit with him. McVey, who did not drink, was friendly with the teetotaling Charlie Gould and the Wright brothers, who were otherwise surrounded by the drunks and gamblers of the baseball fraternity. The Reds were the first ballclub to use the transcontinental railroad, travelling to San Francisco, where they beat all of their competition again.
They would not lose, famously, until June of 1870, in extra-innings against the Brooklyn Atlantic. Shortly thereafter the club fell apart, as it was not making money and Harry Wright fell out with much of the team over their drinking and lack of discipline. Club president AB Champion resigned and the board of directors voted to return the club to amateur status. The following season a splinter group of National Association clubs founded the game's first professional league, the NAPBBP. Harry Wright was hired to manage the Boston club, and he brought three of his old teammates with him - Gould, brother George, and McVey. They were three of the best players in baseball, and McVey might already have been baseball's best hitter, but it is no coincidence that the four men composed the sober, disciplined core of the otherwise rowdy Reds clubs. Harry Wright showed throughout his career an ability to recognize talent and reward discipline, as he would soon show with Al Spalding.
McVey, now 21, served as the team's starting catcher in 1871 and hit .431, finishing second in hitting and second in OPS at .995. He slumped to .321 the following season, but the Boston Red Stockings won the NA pennant both years.
In 1873 the Baltimore Canaries lured McVey to their club by promising him a managerial role. At 23 he was the youngest skipper in baseball, though he gave up the spot partway through the season to focus on playing full-time. He hit .380 and played every position but pitcher.
McVey was back in Boston for 1874-75 and the two years constituted his peak. He hit .357 and slugged .500, both best in baseball over that span. He was worth 69.4 batting runs in that period, far outpacing the league - second was Lip Pike at 53.2. McVey won his third pennant with Boston in 1874.
In 1876 McVey followed Al Spalding to William Hulbert's Chicago White Stockings, founding yet another super team. He kept hitting but began losing some of his power. In two seasons with Chicago McVey hit .357, but had been eclipsed by younger stars like teammate Cap Anson. He threw 151.1 innings over the two years, putting up a respectable 3.33 ERA, largely in relief or emergency starting.
McVey jumped clubs once more in 1878, returning to Cincinnati to play for the rebooted Red Stockings NL franchise. He could still hit, putting up a 135 OPS+ over two years in Cincinnati, and he managed '78 and shared '79 managing duties with old Boston teammate Deacon White. The club finished second in '78 but 5th in '79.
By 1880, with a young family and more money than he ever expected to make in baseball, McVey turned away from the spotlight and the major leagues. Perhaps he saw his skills slowly eroding, or a lack of managerial future, but he remembered California fondly after the 1869 trip, and he uprooted his family and moved to Oakland. He was joined by his parents, who were sharing a house with Calvin at the time of the 1880 census. William took up farming again, to questionable success.
McVey tried playing semi-pro ball in California, but his first team, Bay City, jumped leagues and then folded within weeks. He joined another team, the Californias, for several months, and ended the season with the San Fransisco Knickerbockers, a successor to the club started in the early 1850s by some of the gold-rushing original Knicks.
McVey kept playing independent ball throughout the 1880s, and we have records of him playing as late as 1886, though no records of his statistics survive. He was still known as a ballplayer, though - when he registered to vote in 1896 he was recorded as having 'fair complexion with brown hair and blue eyes,' with distinguishing characteristics: 'baseball marks on fingers.'
The McVeys moved about southern California and the Bay Area in the 1890s, often ending up back in San Francisco. By 1901 he was working as a special policeman by day and a watchman by night. He lost his home and his wife was seriously injured in the 1906 earthquake, and McVey was reduced to living alone in a small shack and panhandling. He was unemployed as late as 1908, but by 1913 had caught on with a mining outfit in Nevada until he was crippled in a 30-foot fall. An old Cincinnati teammate, Doug Allison, petitioned the NL for financial relief for the old hero, but little was raised and McVey remained mired in poverty.
The spirited, athletic teenage phenomenon had seemingly long disappeared, leaving a broken, poverty-stricken old man in his stead, but McVey had one final moment of glory - riding through the streets of Cincinnati before the 1919 World Series as part of a celebration of 50 years since that legendary 1869 Reds team. He passed away in 1926, and drew just one vote in the inaugural Hall of Fame veterans committee election ten years later.
While he has been largely forgotten by baseball history, and even by the 1930s was hardly considered a legend of the game, McVey was a closely-watched superstar by 16, was the game's most feared hitter from 1869-1875, and was tabbed again and again by kingmakers like Al Spalding, Henry Chadwick, and Harry Wright as one of the best in the game. Calvin McVey is an unsung hero of baseball history and one of the very best of his time.
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