First Card Friday: 1908 Tris Speaker

As we say here at The APBA Blog, every card tells a story. Recently, I was rolling some games in my 1908 Detroit Tigers single-team replay when I came across this Tris Speaker card. I noticed that The Gray Eagle was only 19-years old during most of the 1908 campaign. So, I looked up Speaker’s stats on the best baseball website in the world, Baseball-Reference, and noticed that he managed to get into seven games in 1907 meaning he was still a rookie in 1908. So, he is a perfect candidate for First Card Friday.

Granted, this isn’t the best Tris Speaker card with its .224 batting average, but you need to keep in mind it would be the last time Speaker would hit below .300 for the next ten years, and only twice in 19 seasons. If you’re familiar with reading APBA cards, you’re probably thinking that this card would hit better than .224. You are correct. I project this card to produce a .251 average. What you’ve got to remember is that this card is from the 1908 season which has a high percentage of A, A&C, and A&B pitchers. So, it seems as though APBA adjusted the hitters’ cards so that they would more closely produce their actual averages. Against standard pitching, this card should have one less 7, which would allow it to hit .223. Or, it could have one less 8, which would allow Speaker to produce a .229 average. If you’re an APBA regional tournament participate, there’s a big takeaway here. Use teams from pitching strong seasons from the year’s set rather than from a Great Teams of the Past set. If you do, the hitters’ cards will usually produce better results for your tournament teams. It could be the difference in winning a championship or getting an early start back home.

A two-time World Series champion from Hubbard, Texas, Tris Speaker was a career .345 hitter, which ranks sixth all-time. Eight times, Speaker led the American League in doubles, which helped him become the all-time leader in two-baggers with 792. With hitter trying to hit home runs in modern baseball, Speaker’s record is unlikely to be broken anytime soon. The active career leaders in double are Albert Pujols with 661 and Miguel Cabrera with 577. I’m pretty confident that Pujols won’t hit 132 more doubles before he hangs up his spikes.

It’s hard to pick Tris Speaker’s best season because there were so many. Throughout his 22-year career, Speaker led the league in many categories, including games played, hits, doubles, home runs, RBI, batting average, slugging percentage, and on-base percentage. After playing in 2,789 games, Speaker finished with an impressive .428 career on-base percentage. Six times during his playing days Tris Speaker hit .378 or higher. APBA rates his best season as 1923 when he hit .380 with a career-high 17 homers and a league-leading 130 RBI. Not surprisingly, Speaker was rated an Outfielder (3) for his tremendous, shallow centerfield play. As usual, he recorded a high number of outfield assists (28) and double plays turned (8).

When you consider the early baseball immortals, you often think of players like Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Nap Lajoie, and Babe Ruth. Speaker seems to be a forgotten man. Yet, he was not only a great player but also a great player-manager for the Cleveland Indians after he was traded by the Boston Red Sox. For a time before the Red Sox’s Babe Ruth trade, it was considered the worst trade in Red Sox’s history. To this day, one could argue it was just as damaging to Boston baseball As a championship manager, he introduced the platoon system and was innovative in his tactics. To prove my forgotten man theory, I bet many of you might have forgotten to name Tris Speaker if I asked you to name the members of the first Hall of Fame class. However, for those who saw him play, they said he rivaled Cobb or any player of his era.