Shortstops are growing; less so, in height, the average American.
The story goes like this: in 1835, the widow Anna Thornton, a Washington, D.C. socialite and diarist, one of the best-known women in the city, was threatened while in bed by an axe-wielding man who had spent his entire life enslaved in her home.1
Just 18, Arthur Bowen was immediately disarmed by his mother, Thornton’s enslaved attendant, who shared the room. The New York Herald supplied readers with then-resonant, now-dubious motivation: raised “as a pet,” it said, he was doted on, taught the “dangerous gifts of reading and writing,” and promised freedom.
The paper’s correspondent reported that the mixed-race Bowen, a frequent inebriate, had been encouraged by white abolitionists to consider himself a liberator of his race.
After his arrest, white manual workers in the city — called “Mechanics” — whose labor value was weakened by enslaved Blacks, formed a lynch mob at the city prison. They were repelled by Marines but looted Black homes and institutions in what came to be known as the Snow Riot.2
Unable to reach Bowen, the mob looted Black properties and occupied a popular restaurant owned by a mixed-race man named Beverly Snow, who had allegedly profaned the wives of Mechanics. The Washington Post has a fascinating account of the riot, from which I borrowed liberally.)
Anna Thornton testified that Bowen had been more drunk than murderous, and never raised his axe. District Attorney Francis Scott Key still easily secured a guilty verdict, the jury deliberating for 15 minutes, and Bowen faced hanging.
Thornton responded with a 17-page appeal to President Andrew Jackson, a friend of friends. Antiquarians speculate (without evidence) that Thornton’s ardency suggested she knew or believed her husband to be Bowen’s missing father.
As part of his July 4th celebration in 1836, Old Hickory granted the pardon.
The widow freed the rest of her enslaved workers 29 years later, near her death in 1865, the year the federal government freed all slaves.
The Herald’s article suggesting that educated Blacks turn into murderers was published on February 29, 1836. In Brooklyn that day, little roughneck Dickey Pearce was born.
A cross of Joe Pesci and Thomas Edison, blessed with the name and mustache of a 70s porn star, a brilliant baseball improviser “no bigger than a good-sized cruller” at 5’3” and 161 pounds, loved in his his not-yet-annexed city and feared elsewhere, Pearce was responsible for originating ideas at bat and in the field so successful they don’t seem to have needed an inventor (like hitting away from fielders and positioning a defense).
“Every lover of baseball in Brooklyn thought...Dickey Pearce’s short, pudgy legs brought in more tallies for the Atlantics than all the slugging sprinters there were on the team,” said a 1911-12 newspaper listing of greatest players.3
Pearce invented the bunt as a base hit in the 1860s and captained his hometown team, leading it to seven NABPP championships in a dozen years and an 89-game-plus win streak.4
Pearce’s new economy of sacrifices, squeezes, and fair-foul hits,5 along with success at targeting gaps, reenvisioned hitting, and proved a huge success with fans and in games.
Originally a catcher, Pearce, looking like a young Sam Elliott, was one of the first to use signals. Shifted to short outfielder (like the extra in softball) he saw he could narrow hitting gaps by stationing himself permanently in the infield — allowing the other three infielders to move from their traditional spots next to each base; he became, baseball historians agree, the first shortstop.
NOTE: The following section contains methodological no-nos.
In 1871 (first year of reliable statistics), the average size of the National Association’s 18 shortstops was 5’8” and 167 pounds. None reached six-feet. At 176 pounds, the heaviest was Mart King, a chubby who hit .208 that year before disappearing unremarked.
The average size of an American man that year was 5’7” and approximately 145 pounds.6 (The average size of a late 19th-century American woman was about 5’ 2 ½” and 135 pounds.)
In 2021, The average size of regular shortstops was a shade under 6’1” and 198 pounds. The best eight shortstops (WAR) averaged nearly 6’1 ½” and 205 pounds.
The average size of an American man today is 5’9” and 199.8 pounds. (Women average 5”3 ½ and 171 pounds.)
Trends
The average American man is finally heavy enough to play shortstop.
The average American woman is finally heavy enough to play shortstop in 1990 (MLB avg = 169).
Of the 18 shortstops 6’3” and above who have played a full season, only six, ranging from Tony Kubek to Virgil Stallcup, played before Cal Ripken showed that a 6’4” man was able to field as well as Mark Belanger — while hitting 21 times more home runs (431-20).
Just two more of these Gullivers played a season before 2000 (Derek Jeter and A. Cheatrod Rodcheatz).
NEXT TIME, in Big and Bigger, pt 2...
We answer your questions!
“My loudmouth step-brother told me people from the Late Middle Ages were only an inch shorter than today. I don’t want him to think I’m interested so is that true?”
“Was the race between Levi Meyerle’s 1871 batting average (.491) and fielding percentage (.646) as close as it looked?”
“Which is bigger, the number of countries that have more days of medical leave than the U.S. or the number of countries that grew taller at a higher rate than the U.S. between 1985-2016?
Also...Foucaultian charts...
...and the SECRET history of elegant Anna Thornton!
Anna’s refinement betrayed a little-known fact: her clergyman father forged a £4,000 bond to support his philanthropy, was found out, and hanged.
Husband William, an enterprising polymath, created the design for the U.S. Capitol and led the new U.S. Patent Office. He became known for adding his name to other people’s patents and giving patents to himself. He devoted years to discredit Robert Fulton, claiming to anyone who would listen that the father of the steam revolution hadn’t improved on Thorton’s own steamboat patents.7
Thornton’s fortune came from his family’s 70-slave sugar plantation in the Virgin Islands. Not without conscience and “eager to achieve fame (and undoubtedly some expiation) in the cause of anti-slavery,” according to one historian, he later fetched a plan to transport Black people to a free colony in West Africa. (Didn’t happen). He continued to own a smaller number of enslaved people, though some accounts say he wanted them freed at his death. (Didn’t happen.)
PS…
Did you know Black baseball flourished alongside white baseball from the start?
In Philadelphia, a broader-minded white team played exhibitions during the Civil War against the leading Black club — the Pythians, founded by shortstop, scholar, schoolmaster, and civil rights hero Octavius Catto. Catto was murdered a few years later, at the age of 32, while encouraging Black voters.8
Thornton corresponded with Martha Washington and was close friends with two generations of Adamses. She sat for Gilbert Stuart. Severe John Quincy Adams, coldly married — “I am decried an encumbrance,” lamented wife Louisa — was awed by Anna and wrote her a love poem.
A local diarist wrote that the Mechanics “surrounded the Jail and swear they would pull the Jail down...they said their objects was to get Mrs Thortons Mullateto man out and to hang him with out Judge or juror.”
Courtesy of MLB historian John Thorn.
The National Association of Base Ball Players was the first organized league. Union soldiers spread its version of “New York” rules across the country.
Swinging sharply down on a pitch to make the ball bounce in front of the plate then spin foul but remain live; the rule was revoked in 1877. A master like Pearce could direct the ball in any direction.
I can’t find a specific weight measurement for 1871. Size declined for men born between 1820-1840 (worsening nutrition); the average weight of a Civil War soldier was around 145 pounds. By the end of the century, the average 5’8” young man was 154 pounds.
The Clermont, Fulton’s first ship (he’d already invented a submarine and torpedoes), brought passengers from New York City to Albany in 32 hours. As it passed, onlookers “imagined it to be a sea-monster, while others did not hesitate to express their belief that it was a sign of the approaching judgment…The whole country talked of nothing but the sea-monster...”
Another very effective person, Frederick Douglass, had a son playing outfield in Washington, D.C. The father once regaled players before a game in upstate New York, according to a local outlet: “A son of the gifted colored orator is a member of the Mutual nine. Therefore Fred extended a cordial greeting, and after feasting the lads, admonished them concerning the mettle of the Utica crowd.”
Footnote to footnote 10 “Fred.”