KELLY, Michael Joseph ("King")

(b. 31 December 1857 in Troy, New York; d. 8 November 1894 in Boston, Massachusetts), popular baseball player in the 1880s and the 1890s who won batting titles in 1884 and 1886 and was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1945.

Kelly began his life as a poor, first-generation Irish American and became one of the most popular baseball players of the late nineteenth century. He was the son of Michael Kelly, a papermaker who had emigrated from Ireland, and Catherine Kelly. Kelly moved to Paterson, New Jersey, with his mother after his father's death. He dropped out of public school at an early age to work as a bobbin boy at a textile factory. In 1873, at the age of fifteen, he played organized baseball for the first time with the Troy Haymakers. In 1875 he played his first professional game with the Olympics of Paterson, and in 1878 he played a portion of the season for the Buckeye team in Columbus, Ohio.

In 1878 Manager Cal McVey recruited Kelly for the Cincinnati Red Stockings, where he played for two seasons. Although Kelly hit .348 during his second season and developed a reputation as a successful base stealer, McVey was not overly impressed. Cap Anson, believing the young man was only "green," brought him to the Chicago White Stockings in 1880. Anson, six feet tall and weighing 220 pounds, was an imposing figure and a difficult taskmaster. The undisciplined Kelly immediately realized that Anson's ideas about conditioning and training were much more arduous than he had been accustomed to. Nevertheless Kelly and his teammates persevered, forming a seasoned crew that dominated the National League throughout the 1880s.

Kelly quickly became a star player, partly because of his ability but also because of his good looks and exuberant personality. He stood nearly six feet tall, weighed 190 pounds, and was full of self-confidence. Responding to his flamboyance on the field, fans cheered, "Slide, Kelly, Slide!" when he stole bases. A song with that name became a popular hit. Kelly occasionally bent the rules. At a game against Boston in 1881, he took advantage of the early league's reliance on one umpire. Running from second base, he missed third base by ten to fifteen feet in his eagerness to reach home. Since the umpire was occupied with a play at first base, the earned run stood. He also developed a reputation as a drinker, and Anson, a teetotaler who demanded sober players, hired detectives to follow his wayward star. In one instance Anson hired agents to follow seven errant players, and the detectives eventually turned in a comprehensive report on their nocturnal wanderings. Kelly took objection to only one statement in the report. A detective claimed that Kelly drank a glass of lemonade late one night. The unrepentant ball player declared he had never drunk lemonade at that late hour, it was straight whiskey.

In Kelly's seven years with Chicago the team won five pennants. Although he had been recruited to play right field and to catch, he played infield and even pitched on several occasions. Kelly was a good hitter, but his specialty as a player was stealing bases. The league may have had faster runners and Kelly was often handicapped by bruises from catching because he did not wear shin pads, but his intelligence and daring led him to outdo all rivals. Studying a pitcher, taking a long lead, and twisting his feet to arrive at the base from an angle, he perfected the art of stealing bases. Despite the success of these years, Kelly was less than happy with his salary. He was paid $2,500 in 1886, a great deal of money at the time, but both Dan Brouthers and Hoss Radbourn made $4,000. He was also occasionally fined for drinking, and Kelly believed he should get this money back.

In 1887 Chicago sold Kelly to the Boston Beaneaters for the unheard of sum of $10,000, leading fans to refer to him as the "$10,000 Beauty." Although some believed the team sold him because he was a difficult player to work with, Anson said he sold him because the price was right and he wanted to help balance the teams within the league. At first Kelly continued to play well. He stole eighty-four bases during his first year with Boston and became one of only ten players to steal six bases in one game in that era. In 1889 he stole sixty-eight bases and led the league in doubles with forty-one. During Kelly's time in Boston, though, his play began to diminish because of his drinking and his lack of self-control. His popularity, however, continued to grow, especially with Irish immigrants, who worshipped him.

In 1890 Kelly's career began to unravel. The National League offered him a $10,000 bribe to prevent him from joining the Players League revolt that year. When he turned it down, his market value dropped. He joined the rebel league in 1890 as player-manager and won the league's championship with an 81–48 record. In 1891 Kelly managed Kelly's Killers in Cincinnati, Ohio, a team created to fill the void when the Reds jumped to the National League. He returned to the Beaneaters in 1891, though his batting average dropped to .189 the next year. In 1893 he played twenty games for the New York Giants and drifted into the minors. He finally retired in 1894 after sixteen seasons.

Kelly appeared on vaudeville in Ernest L. Thayer's Casey at the Bat and opened a saloon in New York. In early November, while sailing from New York to Boston for a theatrical performance, Kelly contracted pneumonia. Three days later he was taken to Boston Emergency Hospital, where he died on 8 November 1894. His fans had not forgotten him. Over 5,000 Bostonians filed past his coffin in Elks Hall. Kelly is buried in Boston.

Kelly's lifetime statistics are impressive. He won the batting title twice, first in 1884 (.354) and then in 1886 (.388), and he led in runs scored between 1884 and 1886. Stolen base statistics were not kept until 1885, but in the late 1880s he averaged 62 stolen bases per year. His composite average was .308, and he collected 1,357 runs and 1,813 hits in 1,455 games. In 1945 Kelly was elected into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. He also is credited with either inventing or helping to popularize a number of innovations in baseball, including exchanging signals with pitchers and infielders and the "Chicago slide," sliding on his hip while keeping his body low to avoid the baseman's tag. Kelly's fame, large personality, and destructive lifestyle made him a prototype for later players like Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle.

Stephen Fox, Big Leagues: Professional Baseball, Football, and Basketball in National Memory (1994), devotes a number of pages to Kelly's meteoric career. David Quentin Voigt, Baseball: An Illustrated History (1987), and Mike Shatzkin, ed., The Ballplayers: Baseball ' s Ultimate Biographical Reference (1990), offer sketches of Kelly's baseball career. Obituaries are in the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Daily News, the Boston Globe, and the New York Times (all 9 Nov. 1894).

Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr.