William Henry 'Whoop-La' White (1854-1911), Player
Eligible : 1887
Contributions : Despite a turbulent career, White retired in 1886 as one of the best pitchers of all time. Famed for his curveball, White ranked consistently among the league leaders in innings pitched, complete games, and strikeouts.
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| White in 1882 |
Will White is not somebody whose name will be shouted from the rooftops in baseball history. He won't end up in Cooperstown, and to be honest he isn't among the best players to be inducted here - but for a brief moment in the 1880s White was one of the best pitchers to ever live, and certainly the best player in baseball history eligible for our hall.
William Henry White was born in the farming community Caton, NY, in October 1854. He was the fourth of eight children and grew up playing baseball primarily with his family - his older brother James and cousin Elmer White both played in the first season of openly professional play in the National Association, 1871. James would go on to craft a legend in his own right as 'Deacon White.'
By 1875, aged 20, William seemed on the fast track to professional success. He was renowned in regional baseball circles for his curveball, and he was a star pitcher for the amateur powerhouse Lynn (Massachusetts) Live Oaks. That same year he married Harriet Holmes.
1876 and 1877 were something of lost years for White in terms of his career professional statistics. Both years he played for a top pro-am club, the Binghamton Crickets, establishing himself as one of the best pitchers in the country, yet not in the fledgling National League, the established highest league in the country. Still, as 1877 wound down his older brother James (now nationally famous as Deacon), the star catcher and '77 batting champion for the Boston Red Stockings convinced his time to give Will a tryout. Will pitched three games (with his brother, now primarily an infielder, returning to catch his younger brother) and impressed onlookers with his dazzling curveball. He completed all three games, won two of them, and put up an average 3.00 ERA.
White was also something of a sensation for wearing glasses, something incredibly rare for anybody at the time, let alone a professional baseball player. Later, contemporaries would wonder at how he managed to be one of the dominant pitchers of his age while being legally blind.
After the 1877 season the Cincinnati Reds signed both of the White brothers. Deacon continued to be one of the best players in the league, while Will instantly established himself as the league's emerging star pitcher. He finished all 52 games that he started, won 30 games, put up a 1.79 ERA (120 ERA+), and was better the next year, throwing 75 complete games (and an additional relief appearance), good for a league-leading 680 innings, winning 43 times, and posting a 1.99 ERA (120+). Over the two seasons nobody pitched more innings or had a lower ERA, and only the living legend Tommy Bond, pitching for the powerhouse Boston club won more games.
In 1879 Cincinnati newspaperman OP Caylor staged an exhibition of White's curveball, which was his calling card but had accrued an almost unbelievable reputation. The demonstration had White throw a baseball along a fence at an angle so that the ball slipped through a gap in the fence, miss a post that was in-line with the fence to the right, then curve back to the left of the fence when the fencing resumed (see diagram).
White caught on with the Detroit Wolverines, newly added to the NL, in time for the 1881 season, but pitched poorly in a two-game tryout and was released. White complained of a sore arm, but returned to Cincinnati to play casually for local semi-pro clubs.
By the end of 1881 a number of businessmen and baseball figures including the owners of the now-defunct Cincinnati club and the Cincinnati sportswriter OP Caylor, a longtime associate of White's, had laid plans for a new baseball league to compete with the National League - the American Association. The AA essentially marketed itself as a working-class alternative to the NL, offering lower ticket prices, alcohol sales, Sunday afternoon baseball, and franchises in what Hulbert had once referred to as 'river cities' - working class cities like Louisville, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati considered low-brow by Northeastern elites. The AA was an instant success, and gained traction in the press as the 'Beer and Whiskey League.'
White signed on to the rebooted Cincinnati Reds club, and picked up right where he left off. Over 1882-83 White started 119 games, finishing 116 of them. Over 1057 innings he posted a 1.84 ERA (163+). Nobody anywhere in baseball won more games during that time, and only the legendary Charles 'Old Hoss' Radbourn threw more innings. No qualified pitcher had a lower ERA. The Red Stockings cruised to the inaugural Association pennant. The Philadelphia Athletics finished second - 11.5 games back.
As one reads the biographies of 19th-century ballplayers, something jumps out at the reader - every ballplayer was a drinker, a gambler, a womanizer, except whoever one is currently reading about. The same rings true for White - as we all know, professional baseball was rife with debauchery, but White famously refused his entire career to pitch on Sundays, was baptised into the Second Adventist church in August of 1883, and when it came time to invest some of his baseball wages, invested not in a saloon but a tea house on Market Street in Cincinnati. Maybe White was a stern, sober man who eschewed the vices of his contemporaries, or maybe this is post-facto image improvement, as I suspect many such cases are. From all the evidence, though, White appears to have been a man of principle.
By 1884 White was one of the best pitchers of all time, and one of the best two or three pitchers still working. As often befitted a superstar player, Cincinnati made him club manager, though he handed over the reins halfway through the season (despite an impressive 44-27 record), claiming that he was "of too easy a disposition." Indeed, by all accounts he was too mild-mannered to effectively manage. Bespectacled from youth, grey-haired from age 28 and by the mid 1880s prematurely bald, the strait-laced White carried a "professorial" air. Others called him "timid."
1884 marked a turning point in the career of Will White. Up to that point in most baseball leagues hitting a batter would typically be ruled a ball, unless the umpire determined the pitcher had thrown at the batter on purpose. White was a master of pitching inside, intimidating batters and keeping them uncomfortable. In the only two years such statistics were kept and White pitched full-time (1884-85), he led the league in hit batters. In 1884, however, the American Association, and thereafter other leagues, changed the rules to discourage throwing at batters, awarding first base to every single hit batsman. White could no longer work inside to such an extreme degree, and his performance seemed to suffer. Not only did he give away first base all the time (62 HBP over 1884-85), but hitters were no longer constantly afraid of being beaned, and could get closer to the plate for better coverage. He pitched well enough in 1884, throwing 456 innings of league-average ball (3.32 ERA, 101+) and leading the league with 7 shutouts, but by 1885, aged 30 and complaining for years about arm and shoulder issues, White had run out of gas. He started only 34 games, going 18-15 with a below-average 3.53 ERA.
By the end of the 1885 season White knew he had nothing left in his arm. He opened a grocery store in Fairmount, Ohio, near Cincinnati, and returned in 1886 to pitch three mediocre games for the Reds, but he knew he was done and officially retired 5 July, 1886, aged 31. He immediately turned to study ophthalmy (interesting considering his status as the famous bespectacled hurler in the 1870s), opening an optical supply store with his brother Deacon in Buffalo. He also became part owner, with his brother, of the Buffalo Bisons semi-pro team, agreeing to share managerial duties and pitch for the team. When Deacon was barred from involvement in the team due to the reserve clause (his contract was still the exclusive property of the Pittsburgh Alleghanies), Will stepped in as full-time manager, and ended up pitching 20 games in 1889 for the Bisons, posting a good 2.33 ERA even at an advanced age.
White earned a reputation as a successful optician in Buffalo, but his post-baseball career was cut short when, in 1911, he suffered a heart attack and drowned while teaching his niece to swim at his summer home in Port Carling, Ontario. He was 56 years old.
White was always something of an oddity, from his famed victory shout and subsequent nickname, 'whoop-la', to his glasses, to his 'professorial manner.' He also happened to be one of the best baseball pitchers to ever live at the time of his retirement in 1886. At the time, with really just six full seasons of baseball under his belt, he ranked 5th all time in innings pitched, 12th in WAR, 6th in wins, 4th in complete games, and 3rd in shutouts. For a variety of reasons, Will White was a player for the ages.
