published on August 07, 2024 in blog

The life and death of Jim Devlin, baseball's original cheat

In an extract from her new book on cheating in American society, JM Fenster explains how bending the rules has always been a part of baseball

Throughout most millennia, people were too busy avoiding sudden death themselves to worry about which sports teams made the playoffs. In those long years, a good season meant food. “Track” meant food and “field” meant food. Rooting, of course, meant a carrot. Prehistoric peoples didn’t waste words on sports, let alone billions of their hard-earned dollars.

Skipping over ancient times, when amphitheaters teemed with fans of blood sport, a survey of athletic events lands on the gaggles of spectators in more recent centuries who watched local athletes play games on the village green. It was in the late 1700s that horse racing and boxing led the way into professional sports, producing stars known far and wide. Those sports then veered into the even longer history of cheating, as professionals were readily presumed to fix outcomes. Rich people tugged on the ethics from the other direction by encouraging amateurism. The assumption was that while an amateur might cheat, a professional did so as a matter of course. Not every time or all the time, but the possibility was in the air. A professional would weigh the factors.

Townball was one of the sports seen on the village greens, having been played by either that name or the more modern “baseball” for at least 500 years. It is apparently intrinsic to human physiology to throw a ball and hit a ball, catch a ball, chase a grounder and miss the cutoff. In the mid-1800s teams represented cities and played one another. That was one new wrinkle, and after the Civil War there was another: professionals took over. One of them was a Philadelphia-born pitcher named Jim Devlin, who was born in obscurity in 1849 and died in oblivion in 1883. In between, he was a man of his century.

Devlin’s education had been rudimentary. He was unsophisticated but well-liked, as he established a solid reputation as a pitcher. His trademark was the toothpick wagging around in his mouth while he played. Hired by the Louisville Grays, Devlin pitched 685 innings in his first full season, with an earned run average of 1.50. A pitcher with a pale version of those stats today is considered a beast and will receive at least $12m per year. The word in that assessment that would have made Devlin jealous is not “million,” however. It is “receive.” In 1876 he was promised a fantastic amount of money, $2,000 a year. Except that the Louisville team abruptly stopped paying its players midway through the season. Devlin tried to switch to St Louis, but thanks to rules instituted by the brand new National League, he was bound to Louisville. The world is not an excuse. However, the one in which Devlin arose to play ball was rife with cheats.

In the summer of 1876, a Brooklyn bookie by the name of Fred Seibert tried with his partner, a man named McCloud, to enlist Jim Devlin in throwing a game or two.

Devlin flatly rejected Seibert’s overture. The next year, though, on a road trip to New York City, he was introduced to McCloud by the newsstand operator at the hotel in which he was staying. Devlin changed his mind and with that, the Grays lost to Cincinnati ... and then Indianapolis. And so on in the summer of ’77. In Devlin’s defense, cheating on baseball teams wasn’t well-coordinated. Others on the Grays were also known or suspected to be manipulating the games. Then again, there was the opposing team and whatever its players were doing for whichever bookies they secretly worked for. The wonder is that anyone knew for sure which way to run on the bases.

Whoever made it happen, the vaunted Grays blew an enormous lead in the standings and lost the pennant. An investigation followed. None of that presented a new chapter in the short history of professional baseball. Following the usual script, Devlin humbly confessed, leaving out few if any details. Other suspected Grays did the same. Devlin then awaited his fate, anticipating that he’d be sacked from the Grays and go on to St Louis, his heart’s desire. He had reason for optimism when the matter was ultimately handed over to his good friend William Hulbert, the new president of the two-year-old National League. A bearish Chicagoan with a thriving brokerage, Hulbert, quite significantly, hadn’t been involved in baseball before buying into the White Stockings as a civic gesture. To him, the Louisville scandal had absolutely nothing to do with friendship. On the contrary, it presented an opportunity “to strike an effective blow.” With great fanfare, Hulbert expelled Devlin and the others – not just from the Grays, but from every team in the League and not just for the season, but forever.

That was it. Forever.

The others complained, but soon eased past baseball into regular jobs. Devlin, however, was affected more deeply. For two years, a man with subpar attainments in almost every field had been called the best of the best for something. It barely matters what it was, because as of 15 December 1877, it was gone. Though released from the narrow world of baseball into the wider world, Devlin responded as though he couldn’t move: a fox in a trap, kicking out and writhing without ceasing, even though the only one he was hurting was himself. He tried to express the circumstances of his cheating and the ways that he was different, but when he did, he was using the language of all that he had known before. Baseball wasn’t going to speak that language anymore. He swore that when he promised never to cheat again, he was telling the absolute truth. When it comes to cheating, though, truth isn’t absolute – a fact that William Hulbert, for one, chose not to ignore.

Devlin wrote tortured letters to Hulbert for the rest of his life; every day, according to some reports. Albert Spalding, later known for his sporting goods company, started as a ballplayer and happened to be in Hulbert’s outer office sometime after the scandal:

The outer door opened and a sorry-looking specimen entered. It was midwinter and very cold, but the poor fellow had no overcoat. His dust covered garments were threadbare and seedy. His shoes were worn through with much tramping, while the red flesh showing in places indicated that if stockings were present they afforded not much protection ... The visitor passed me without a glance in my direction. His eyes were fixed upon the occupant of the farther room. He walked straight to the chair where Mr Hulbert sat, and, dropping to his knees at the big man’s feet, lifted his eyes in prayerful entreaty, while his frame shook with the emotion so long restrained ... The man was Devlin, one of the Louisville players. The situation, as he kneeled there in abject humiliation, was beyond the realm of pathos. It was a scene of heartrending tragedy. Devlin was in tears, Hulbert was in tears, and if the mists of a tearful sympathy filled my eyes I have no excuse.

Hulbert pulled a $50 bill from his pocket, gave it to Devlin, and with an eye grown steely sent him away with the assurance that he could never and would never be forgiven for having “sold a game.” Devlin returned home to Philadelphia, where he kept on writing letters to Hulbert. Living at poverty’s very end, Devlin died at 33. Spalding was correct, the whole affair, all the way along, was a tableau of heartrending tragedy; the only question was which kind.

Devlin’s story was often told during the first 25 years of the National League. He provided the dividing line and if he didn’t exactly die for the sins of baseball cheaters before and since, he certainly served as a vivid warning. His case continues to present its mixture of triumph and regret. Because the rules, or their enforcement, changed under his feet, one is tempted to feel sorry for the poor guy. He was a martyr, but one of convenience, not conscience. On that point, his fate was epic as his spirit toppled into dust.

In the present day, Devlin is rarely remembered in baseball, but across the arc of cheating history, he lives on as the symbol of every honest effort to give a reset to the world (or any slice of it). He didn’t get a second chance when he was caught because of the prevailing opinion that a cheater is stamped for life, unable to resist the temptation to betray again. Since the dawn of man, only two routes have been available to those wishing to start the world over as a haven free from cheating. The first is to get rid of the cheater. That was Hulbert’s verdict for Devlin. The second route is to rehabilitate the cheater.

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