Gabby Hartnett was an American professional baseball player, manager and coach. He played as a catcher in Major League Baseball for the Chicago Cubs from 1922 to 1940, and also served as a a color commentator for CBS' Major League Baseball telecasts and coach and scout for the Kansas City Athletic.
Background
Gabby Hartnett was born Charles Leo Hartnett on December 20, 1900 in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, United States. He was the eldest of fourteen children of Fred Hartnett, a mill worker and bus and streetcar conductor, and Ellen "Nell" Tucker. In 1910, the family moved to Millville, Massachussets.
Education
Hartnett attended school through the eighth grade at Millville, Massachussets. Leaving school to help support his family, Hartnett picked berries for fifteen cents per quart and worked in the U. S. Rubber Shop.
He took jobs as a semiprofessional baseball catcher for a variety of local mill teams and town squads.
In 1918, Hartnett was given a partial scholarship to play baseball for Dean Academy, a junior college in Franklin, Massachussets. He attended Dean for two years but did not graduate.
Career
Hartnett took jobs as a semiprofessional baseball catcher for a variety of local mill teams and town squads. In 1921, while working in the shipping department of the American Steel and Wire mill in Worcester, Massachussets, the young backstop signed a professional contract with the Worcester Boosters in the Eastern League. Playing one hundred games and batting . 264 in his first season, Hartnett was scouted by the Giants' Jesse Burkett who reported to manager John McGraw that Hartnett's small hands would be a liability in the major leagues. Chicago Cubs scout Jack Doyle disagreed, and the Cubs acquired Hartnett's contract for $2, 500.
Hartnett's tenure with the Cubs began as backup catcher to Bob O'Farrell. He played his first major league game from behind the plate in the 1922 season opener, catching Grover Cleveland Alexander. The Cubs won, but Hartnett went hitless. During the year, he saw action mostly as Alexander's personal backstop, batting . 194 in thirty-one games. Continuing a reserve role in 1923, he appeared in thirty-one games at first base and thirty-nine catching while batting . 268 with eight home runs.
He began a fifteen-year stint as the Cubs' regular catcher in 1924. The next year, Hartnett became baseball's first slugging catcher, with twenty-four home runs accompanying a . 238 average and sixty-seven runs batted in.
Following a personally disastrous 1929, when a throwing-arm injury limited him to twenty-two times at bat for the year, Hartnett enjoyed his best individual season in 1930, establishing career highs of 141 games, thirty-seven home runs, 122 runs batted in, 172 hits and eighty-four runs scored. His . 339 batting average that year was exceeded by . 344 in 1935, when he was named the National League's Most Valuable Player. He went on to hit . 354 in 1937.
The Cubs appeared in four World Series at three-year intervals beginning in 1929. Chicago lost them all as Hartnett batted . 241 with two home runs in fifty-four at bats. In 1935, while losing in six games to Detroit, Hartnett hit his series best . 292.
His personal career highlight came in the next-to-last series of the 1938 season. Trailing the league-leading Pirates by half a game and with darkness descending on Wrigley Field, Hartnett propelled a ninth-inning home run, known as the "homer in the gloamin', " that carried the Cubs to the National League pennant.
At the start of 1938, he was made a coach. Then, in July, with the Cubs six and a half games from first, Hartnett was promoted to manager. For the balance of the season, Chicago won forty-four and lost twenty-seven. Perhaps emotionally drained from the tense pennant race, the Cubs were shut down 4-0 by the Yankees in the fall classic. Hartnett was named starting catcher for the National League in the first five all-star games of 1933-1937. He batted . 200 and was involved in two famous incidents. In 1934 Hartnett was catching when New York Giants ace Carl Hubbell struck out, in order, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmy Foxx, Al Simmons, and Joe Cronin. Three years later St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Dizzy Dean, after shaking off a Hartnett signal, was hit by a line drive that broke his toe, thus shortening his career.
Hartnett's tenure as player-manager continued through the 1940 season; he accumulated a record of 203 wins and 176 losses. A slate of eighty-four wins and seventy losses in 1939 resulted in a fourth-place finish for the Cubs, one place higher than the 1940 season, with seventy-five wins and seventy-nine losses. That year Hartnett played in only thirty-seven games batting . 266. In November, he was released by the Cubs as both player and manager.
In 1941 Hartnett joined the New York Giants as player-coach under manager Bill Terry. For his last year as an active player, the forty-year-old catcher hit . 300 in sixty-four games with forty-five hits producing five home runs and twenty-six runs batted in.
Upon his retirement as a player in 1941, Hartnett held career records for a catcher in home runs (236), games played (1, 990), season batting average (. 354), and lifetime hitting average (. 298). A defensive standout, Hartnett caught one hundred or more games in twelve seasons, eight of them consecutively (1930-1937). Managing pitchers was his forte: over the 1933-1934 seasons he handled 452 chances without an error. Dizzy Dean marveled at Hartnett's expertise at setting a target, "like throwing a ball in a funnel. " Chosen to the all-time Golden Glove team, he led National League catchers six times in fielding percentage and assists and four times in putouts, and in 1992, still ranked fourth in career double plays. Hartnett moved on to managerial jobs in the American Association with Indianapolis (1942) and in the International League with Jersey City (1943-1945) and Buffalo (1946).
He returned to major league baseball as coach for the Kansas City Athletics in 1965 and as scout in 1966. He also worked in public relations. He lived in Chicago in the off-season, where he established a successful insurance company.
(GABBY HARTNETT AUTOGRAPH 1961 FLEER PSA/DNA SIGNED Gabby ...)
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Views
Quotations:
"Stan Hack has as many friends in baseball as Leo Durocher has enemies. "
Personality
At the beginning of his professional career Hartnett was rather unsure, nervous and quiet. He earned the nickname "Gabby" from newspaperman Eddie Sullivan, who jokingly called him the "gabbiest guy" on the team.
As he grew older and added weight, he developed a ruddy complexion, resulting in the nickname "Old Tomato Face. "
Quotes from others about the person
"His last game long since played, but his love of baseball undiminished to the end. … As man and player … Rhode Island can be proud to call him a native son. "
Connections
On January 18, 1929, Hartnett married Martha Henrietta Marshall of Chicago. They had two children.