SABR 35 - Cap Anson on Broadway (Research Presentation)
|
|
| By The SABR Office |
Cap Anson on Broadway
David Fleitz
King I
Adrian (Cap) Anson, the premier hitter and manager of the first three decades of professional baseball, was also the first major leaguer to appear on the Broadway stage. Anson portrayed himself in a play titled "A Runaway Colt,” which landed on Broadway for a three-week run in December 1895.
Anson claimed that he was “a greater actor than any ballplayer and a greater ballplayer than any actor,” but his Broadway career ended in failure as reviewers savaged his performance (the Chicago Tribune called the play “driveling stupidity.”) The show was a financial disaster, and closed after a brief run.
By the late 1890s, baseball stars had become national celebrities, and Anson’s theater career, unsuccessful though it was, offered proof that baseball was no longer merely a boys’ game. This presentation will show how Anson’s brief turn on the stage spotlighted the growing popularity of professional sports, and how it was in this era that baseball took its place as the true national pastime.
DAVID FLEITZ is a computer systems analyst and SABR member from Bowling Green, Ohio and is the author of Shoeless: The Life and Times of Joe Jackson (McFarland, 2001), Louis Sockalexis: The First Cleveland Indian (McFarland, 2002), and Ghosts in the Gallery at Cooperstown (McFarland, 2004). His latest book, Cap Anson: The Grand Old Man of Baseball, will be released by McFarland this summer.
|
|
| | Created On: 2005-07-12 |
|
|
|
|
|
Page Link: http://www.sabr.org/sabr.cfm?a=cms,c,1331,17,162
|
|
|
 |
|
