Groundskeeping, Brothers x 2 & A Clubhouse Crime

Groundskeeping, Brothers x 2 & A Clubhouse Crime

Athletics manager, Connie Mack, hired America’s best groundskeeper in 1901.

Tom Murphy had transformed Union Park into a unique home field advantage for the Baltimore Orioles of the 1890’s. At a time when most ballparks were weedy hardscrabble fields, Murphy created a ballpark masterpiece.

He embedded a concrete slab and fashioned hard clay in front of the plate. Baltimore Chops bounced high and Oriole batters reached first before the throw. The third base line slanted inward to keep bunts from rolling foul. The first base line sloped downhill to complement speedy players. The mound, raised and lowered from one game to the next, was sprinkled with soap flakes to vex opposing ace pitchers. Another trick was growing grass so high in the outfield that Baltimore outfielders could hide an extra ball. Tom Murphy was so devoted to his craft that he slept in a cottage on Union Park grounds.

Murphy started to work his landscaping magic in Philadelphia as well. However, in his first season on the job (June 6, 1901), he quarreled with Athletics night watchman, Connie Mack’s brother Dennis. Murphy got so riled up that he slammed Dennis on the head with a baseball bat and abandoned him unconscious in the clubhouse. Dennis barely survived but never returned to normal life.

Before trial, Tom Murphy skipped bail and disappeared. In an era before police jurisdictions had ways to share information, it was easy to hide. Yet by coincidence of the strangest sort, Connie Mack was walking around St. Louis before a road game over a year later when he spotted Murphy. The groundskeeper was found guilty of aggravated assault and battery and sentenced to two years and nine months in the penitentiary.

Detroit manager Hughie Jennings, one of the Orioles stars in the 1890’s, gave Murphy a second chance and hired him to manicure Bennett Park in 1909. The season featured an intense pennant race with the Tigers and 22-year-old Ty Cobb beating Mack’s Athletics by three games.

Meanwhile, the Giants had their own skillful groundskeeper, Tom’s older brother John Murphy. Starting in 1903, John converted the low-lying mud flat called the Polo Grounds into the best-landscaped ballpark in the big leagues. Rather than using every trick to favor the home team, John created a meticulous playing surface as smooth as a billiard table. He engineered effective drainage, developed new combinations of dirt, artistically cut grass to spell out words on the field and planted flowers in rain barrels along the stands.

John McGraw also sent Murphy to Marlin Springs, Texas each winter in advance of spring training. He’d arrive on February 1 to remove sand, level the field and chase off stray pigs and horses. Additionally, John Murphy supervised the work on the construction of diamonds across the country until he passed in 1913. Tom Murphy left Detroit in 1912 and again disappeared, this time forever.

In all, Tom and John Murphy prepared fields for many pennant winners and along the way they pioneered baseball landscape architecture for others to follow.