Baseball's Dark Prince: Hal Chase the New York Yankees First Superstar and the Game's Most Degenerate Gambler

 The first superstar of the New York Yankees--then called the New York Highlanders until around 1913-- Hal Chase, was never formally banned from professional baseball despite his reputation as the game’s biggest gambler, game fixer, womanizer and immoral drunkard at a time when the sport was filled with gamblers, game-fixers, womanizers and immoral drunkards.  The man that many in the press somewhat derisively called “Prince” Hal, after Falstaff’s young drinking buddy in Shakespeare’s series of King Henry plays was never convicted, at least not on paper in a court of law anyway, of any wrongdoing.

But Hal Chase’s decorated playing career, in the Major Leagues and his infamous notoriety as a gambler among sportswriters and fans, ended not with a conviction but with an anticlimactic unwritten agreement by everyone in professional baseball to mark and avoid the talented first baseman in 1919 after he had spent fifteen seasons as one of the game’s finest players on the baseball diamond.  

During the offseason of 1919, after having been accused of fixing games and betting against his own team by his teammates on the Cincinnati Reds and by legendary Hall of Fame pitcher and manager Christy Mathewson, Hal Chase was exonerated in a New York City courtroom by the National Commission of Professional Baseball, a precursor to today’s Office of the Commissioner of Major League Baseball.

The man known as “Prince Hal” Chase may have won the case that professional baseball had against him for fixing ball games, but his actions did and would catch up to him, and Hal Chase may have won in the courtroom in an era of baseball when everyone from fans, to players, to coaches and even to umpires was known to place a friendly wager on a ballgame every now and again, but he definitely lost at the game of life and remains, to this day, one of baseball’s most tragic figures.

Reporters from New York City who just happened to be covering the Rose Bowl Parade in Pasadena, California in 1930, Hal Chase’s home state, interviewed the then still only forty-six year old former Yankees superstar who was still talented enough to be playing semi-pro ball even at that age, and referred to the man who was considered by many during the years 1905 to 1920 to be professional baseball’s best all-around athlete as a, “Shambling, derelict drunk.” (SABR)

1913 New York Yankees

But it definitely hadn’t always been that way for Hal Chase.  Twenty-five years earlier in 1905 Hal Chase had burst upon the professional baseball scene as the sport’s first great superstar of the twentieth century.

When he first came up with the New York Highlanders as a twenty-two year old it seemed that Hal Chase was loved by almost everyone and loved not just for his athletic grace on the baseball field but also for his persona off the field.

Editor of the then influential Baseball Magazine F.C. Lane wrote during spring training 1905 that he found the collegiate star Chase, “Without any tinge of affectation or egotism,” and Lane went on to write also that, “Chase has the easy dispassionate air of a man who is completely at peace with himself….and at ease with his surroundings.”

Chase entered the 1905 season as one of baseball’s first ever highly touted collegiate prospects.  Chase had been a star at Santa Clara University near his home in California from 1903-1904 prior to signing a then lucrative contract with New York in the American League, and though later in life Chase would claim that he had majored in Civil Engineering and had left school only a few credits short of a degree to pursue his professional baseball career, investigations would reveal that Santa Clara University had no record of Hal Chase ever having actually registered for a single class while at the school!  The university, it seems, had hired Chase as a sort of baseball ringer to bring notoriety to the school during the years 1903-04.

But despite being sketchy about his past, to say the least, Hal Chase did not disappoint on the ball field during the start of his career.  Even over half a century after his forced retirement in 1920 many who saw him play claimed that Hal Chase was the greatest and most athletic baseball player that they had ever seen.

Later in life, Chase’s first manager when he came up to the big leagues with the New York Highlanders in 1905 Clark Griffith, who himself spent nearly seventy years in professional baseball as a player, manager and team owner of the Washington Senators said of Chase that, “There wasn’t a modern first baseman who could come close to him.  There wasn’t even any ‘second’ Hal Chase’.  He was in a class by himself.”

As a baseball player near the turn of the twentieth century Hal Chase was without comparison at that time when it came to power, speed and athleticism.  There is a rumor in baseball lore that even Lou Gehrig himself believed that he was the second best first baseman in Yankees history after hearing so much during his playing days from old time coaches, fans and reporters about the incomparable Hal Chase.

But although Hal Chase was certainly a “Prince” on the baseball field and physically as a baseball player, after only a year or two in the league, his reputation as a human being definitely began to suffer.

After one season with the New York ball club he became notorious for insulting his teammates when talking to reporters often referring to them as dopes and saying to writers that he didn’t bother to play his hardest every day because he didn’t want to show up the other players on his team, none of whom at least according to Chase, were as talented as he was.

Early on in his career he openly violated his contract with the Highlanders by moonlighting during the off season and playing ball for semi pro teams under the assumed name of “Schulz”.  When asked once if he was “Schulz” Chase openly admitted to playing in other leagues under assumed names, but the Highlanders who until that point had been a second rate club with little star power on their roster, never bothered to discipline Chase for any of his transgressions either on or off the field.  And as could be expected things only got worse as time went on.

In 1907 while the Highlanders were mired in a horrid stretch of play, losing eighteen out of twenty-four games at one point, many of his teammates started to suspect that Chase may not have been giving his all on the field.  There were rumors that he might be taking kickbacks from gamblers to throw baseball games.

1912 Game at Hilltop Park Home of the New York Highlanders

Rumors swirled for several years.  It was an article in the New York Times that first publicly hinted at the possibility of Hal Chase, and perhaps other members of the New York Highlanders intentionally throwing baseball games by saying of the Highlanders, “A leader of certain malcontents has been very unfortunate in making mistakes at critical times, and has committed errors of omission that were very costly.”

No players were explicitly named in the Times article but rumor had it that it was authoritarian and moralistic manager of the Highlanders George Stallings who had given inside information about the specter of game throwing on his ball club to reporters and everyone involved in baseball knew that he was directly referencing Hal Chase.

This issue came to a head during the 1910 season when George Stallings approached the owner of the New York Highlanders Frank Farrell and accused Hal Chase, based on the testimony of several Highlander players, of “Willfully indifferent play,” and of openly conspiring with gamblers to throw ball games.

Farrell told the press that the accusations that Stallings made against the team’s star were, “very grave.”  Farrell vowed to launch a full investigation into the matter and said that if any of Stallings’ accusations against Chase were proven to be true then he would bring the matter before the American League offices.

But, as it were, Farrell conducted his investigation by holding interviews with all the Highlander players, many of whom felt disillusioned with Stallings authoritarian style of management and many despite expressing their dislike for the personality of their teammate, chose to defend Chase.

In the end, not only was nothing done to discipline Chase despite a preponderance of evidence that he had conspired with gamblers to intentionally throw baseball games, but it would appear that Farrell sought to protect his star player by naming him the new manager of the New York Highlanders and by firing George Stallings!

Stallings would go on to manage the Boston Braves to their one and only World Series Championship in 1914, while Hal Chase for his part would only be player/manager of the New York Highlanders for one lackluster season before more rumors about his throwing games as a player began to swirl and Chase jumped ship to join the upstart Federal League in 1914.

As it were, the Federal League folded in 1915 and Chase was forced to seek employment in either the American or National Leagues.  This time most teams stayed away from signing or even negotiating with Chase despite the fact that he had won a homerun title during his time in the Federal League.

Legendary Detroit Tigers player and manager Hughie Jennings, who was a teammate and manager of the somewhat infamous Ty Cobb, said of Hal Chase prior to the 1916 season, “For all his ability I would not have him on my club.  He will not heed training rules and has a demoralizing influence on the younger players.  One of his favorite stunts is to go around telling one man what another is supposed to have said about him until the whole squad is sore and will not give the sort of work that it is paid for.”  Jennings called Chase, “A chronic troublemaker.”

It seemed as if all the big league clubs had finally banded together and sought to ostracize Chase from the game, but then on the day before the 1916 season began, believing that they were just one bat short of winning a pennant and in desperate need of a first baseman, the Cincinnati Reds took a chance on the former New York Yankees superstar and signed the thirty-five year old Prince Hal to a contract.

His first year with the Cincinnati Reds was nothing short of spectacular.  Chase, who didn’t even sign with the club until less than twenty-four hours before Cincinnati’s first game went on to win the National League batting title hitting .339 and stealing twenty-two bases.  Prince Hal’s individual stats may have been spectacular that year but the Cincinnati ball club was not.  The Reds finished the 1916 season with a record of only sixty wins against a league leading ninety-three losses.  It didn’t take long for Hal’s teammates in Cincinnati to realize that Hal Chase wasn’t about winning, but rather Hal Chase was only about making money for Hal Chase.

Hal Chase at bat for the Cincinnati Reds in 1916

The end came, finally, in August 1918 when Legendary Hall of Fame pitcher and then manager of the Cincinnati Reds Christy Mathewson accused Chase, this time openly calling him out by name to the press, of, “Indifferent play,” and of, “Intentionally throwing baseball games.”  

A pitcher on the Cincinnati Reds, Jimmy Ring had told his manager Mathewson that prior to a game in which Ring was scheduled to pitch in that year, Chase had approached him in private and offered the rookie pitcher $50 (or about the equivalent of $1500 in today’s money) if he would intentionally help Chase throw the game, and not pitch his best, against the New York Giants.

Ring claimed that he refused the bribe and pitched to the best of his ability.  The Reds still lost the game anyway and Ring later said that when he got back to his hotel room a roll of bills totaling $50 was waiting for him.  Another player on the Reds named Greasy Neale also came forward and said that he had overheard Chase bragging about winning $500 for throwing Reds games and that he too had been encouraged to bet on his team’s own games by Chase.

After hearing these accusations Christy Mathewson as manager of the Cincinnati Reds, a man who was known for his steadfast Christian values, took the unprecedented move of unilaterally suspending Hal Chase for the remainder of the 1918 season beginning on August 8th of that year.  Though Chase remained with the Cincinnati ball club for the rest of the year, Mathewson remained true to his word, and Chase only made one more appearance as a pinch hitter over the course of the rest of that baseball season.

A hearing was held that offseason in a New York City courtroom presided over by National League President John Heydler to determine whether or not Chase should be banned from baseball for compromising the integrity of the game.  And this time, though Chase was exonerated and allowed to stay in the game of baseball, the language used against him was a lot less flattering than it had been in the past.

Chrsity Mathewson as Manager of the Reds

Heydler found that, “Chase did not take baseball or anything else that seriously,” but he also determined that there, “was not enough concrete evidence to charge him with any wrongdoing,” and he specifically cited one game in which Chase was accused of betting against his own ballclub with bookmakers, but Heydler noted that in that very same game, it was Chase himself who had hit the game winning homerun.

Hal Chase was exonerated but the Cincinnati Reds wanted nothing to do with him anymore.  They were able to swing a trade with the New York Giants for the 1919 season but after once again being caught betting on baseball and attempting to bribe teammates, National League President John Heydler ordered behind closed doors that the New York Giants unceremoniously cut Chase from their roster which they promptly did.  This time Hal Chase was out of professional baseball for good.

After the 1919 Black Sox scandal Chase, who was involved in throwing that year’s World Series this time using his considerable pull with other players off the field to do so, or so it was said, was called to testify about the dark state of gambling and baseball at that time.  Chase, for his part, made the game itself and gambling seem inseparable and in a final, ironic twist of fate, it could be said that it was Chase’s testimony which finally spurred the league owners on to take a zero tolerance policy towards gambling and professional baseball.

For his part Hal Chase did spend the rest of his life living with regret and struggling to clear his name.  He had a nervous breakdown after his divorce, was forced to work an unending series of menial and low paying manual labor jobs after his days in baseball were up and went to live on his sister’s farm where he resided by himself in a shack on their property because his brother-in-law considered him too much of a degenerate to reside with the rest of the family in the main house.

Hal Chase the greatest defensive ballplayer ever?

The man they called Prince Hal Chase, the first true superstar in the storied history of the New York Yankees, passed away at the age of sixty-four from cirrhosis of the liver, alone in a California hospital.

Many still consider Hal Chase the best universal defender and most athletic player in the history of baseball even today…

For more on the life and career of Hal Chase visit:

https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/hal-chase/