The Main Event
- Sherry Magee (born 1884) – Left fielder for the Phillies from 1904–1914 and one of the finest hitters and defenders of the dead-ball era; won the 1910 NL batting title (.331) and led the league in RBIs four times. He’s on the Phillies Wall of Fame.
Born August 6, 1884, in the oilfield town of Clarendon, Pennsylvania, Sherwood Robert “Sherry” Magee spent sixteen big-league seasons proving he could do everything a ballplayer was asked to do — hit for average, hit for power, run, field, and throw — while also proving, with some regularity, that he could knock a man out cold. He was, for a decade, the best all-around player the Philadelphia Phillies had, and one of the most talented and combustible men in the National League.
From Sandlot to Starting Left Field in 48 Hours
Magee’s path to the majors reads like a tall tale. In late June 1904, Phillies scout Jim Randall was stepping off a train in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, when he overheard local fans raving about a kid tearing up games for a scrub outfit called the Lindner team. Randall tracked the nineteen-year-old down and asked if he’d like to play for a league club. “With what team?” Magee asked. “With the Phillies,” Randall said. Magee didn’t quite believe it until Randall produced a contract and a roll of cash. He was practicing with Philadelphia the next day and starting in left field against the Brooklyn Superbas the day after that — a jump from the sandlots to the majors that sportswriters of the era considered unprecedented. He misjudged a couple of fly balls in his debut but hit the ball hard all afternoon, and within three weeks he’d claimed the left field job for good, prompting the Phillies to trade away the man he’d replaced.
Magee barely slowed down from there. He scored 100 runs and stole 48 bases in his first full season, then swiped 55 the year after — a modern Phillies record that stood until Juan Samuel broke it in 1984. By 1907 he was leading the league in RBI. His signature year came in 1910, when he played all 154 games, dethroned Honus Wagner atop the batting race with a .331 average, and led the National League in runs, RBI, on-base percentage, and slugging. Contemporaries rated him a legitimate five-tool player before the term existed; a Pirates scout marveled that every throw from his glove arrived “on a line and right on target,” and one Cincinnati writer called him simply one of the best all-around players the game had ever produced.
He was also, by wide agreement, one of the league’s biggest headaches for umpires. The Philadelphia press noted after the 1908 season that his suspension record for “scrapping with the umpires” spoke for itself, and teammates learned to duck his tongue-lashings when they made a mental mistake in the field.
The Punch Heard Around the League
That temper produced the defining, and most damaging, moment of Magee’s career. On July 10, 1911, in St. Louis, rookie umpire Bill Finneran rang him up on a called third strike with the Phillies clinging to a one-run lead. Magee flipped his bat in disgust and was ejected — and as he turned to walk toward the dugout, he wheeled back and dropped Finneran with a single left hand to the jaw. Finneran hit the ground bleeding and briefly unconscious; he was helped up by his own crew and had to be physically restrained from charging the Phillies’ bench once he came to. NL President Thomas Lynch, a former umpire himself, fined Magee $200 and suspended him for the rest of the season, the harshest penalty handed down by the league in more than three decades. The Phillies appealed, arguing they couldn’t afford to lose a middle-of-the-order bat during a pennant race, and lost; the club went 13-16 and slid to fourth place before Lynch relented and reinstated Magee with five weeks left. He came back and hit seven of his fifteen home runs down the stretch, but the season, and to a real degree his reputation, never fully recovered.
Captain, Utility Man, and a One-Way Ticket to Boston
Oddly, it was a promotion that finally won Philadelphia’s notoriously tough fans over. Named team captain in 1914, Magee suddenly had license to bark at teammates as part of the job, and by his own team’s account it made him a better leader rather than a pest. That season, already appointed to move around the diamond due to injuries, he played 39 games at shortstop, 32 at first base, and eight at second — all while batting .314 and leading the league in hits, doubles, RBI, and slugging. It remains one of the more remarkable multi-position offensive seasons of the era. Yet when it came time to hire a new manager, the Phillies passed him over, and that December they shipped him to the world champion Boston Braves for cash and players to be named. He never got to enjoy the payoff: Philadelphia won its first pennant the very next season, without him.
Magee’s Boston tenure started disastrously — he stepped in a hole shagging fly balls in his first spring training practice and broke his collarbone, a wound that sapped his power for good at age thirty. He hit as low as .241 the following year before Cincinnati claimed him off waivers in 1917 and got a career-reviving .321 out of him down the stretch. In the war-shortened 1918 season he led the NL in RBI for the fourth time in his career, a feat that still leaves him as the only non-Hall of Famer to do it four times. A serious illness cost him two months in 1919, but he finally got his pennant winner, appearing twice as a pinch hitter in that year’s scandal-tainted World Series before Cincinnati released him.
From Umpire-Baiter to Umpire
Magee spent seven more years playing and managing in the minors, finally hanging up his spikes at 42. With no trade to fall back on and a family to support, he found an unlikely second act: he became an umpire, working the New York-Penn League in 1927 before earning a promotion to the National League staff in 1928 — under John Heydler, the same league official who had been on duty during the Finneran fiasco seventeen years earlier. Baseball writers braced for a disaster and instead watched Magee run a tight, well-regarded game, silencing the skeptics who assumed the game’s most notorious umpire-puncher would make an awful umpire himself.
He never got much chance to build on it. In early March 1929, Magee came down with what seemed like a bad headache and fever at his Philadelphia home; it was diagnosed as pneumonia, and he died a week later, on March 13, at the age of 44. The wire-service obituary remembered him plainly and accurately as “one of baseball’s most colorful figures” — a five-tool star, a fearsome brawler, and, however briefly, a surprisingly good umpire.
Philadelphia Baseball Events for August 6
- August 6, 1890 – Manager Harry Wright returns to the dugout after missing more than two months due to blindness.
- August 6, 1894 – The stands at the Phillies’ wooden home ballpark burn down the morning before an afternoon game; partially rebuilt by August 18 and eventually rebuilt fully in brick and steel.
- August 6, 1933 – Rookie third baseman Pinky Higgins hits for the cycle in a 12-8 win over the Washington Senators.
- August 6, 1940 – Washington rookie Sid Hudson one-hits the A’s — his second one-hit shutout of the year — on his way to a 17-win rookie season.
- August 6, 1960 – Robin Roberts throws a complete game, beating Los Angeles 3-1 while allowing 13 hits, all singles.
- August 6, 1971 – Manager Frank Lucchesi shifts right-hander Bill Wilson to third base and brings in lefty Joe Hoerner just to face Willie Stargell; Hoerner strikes out Stargell, and Wilson pitches the rest of the game.
- August 6, 1974 – The Phillies beat the Cubs 8-3 while recording only a single assist in the game — the sixth time they’d done that.
- August 6, 1978 – Traded Davey Johnson to the Chicago Cubs for Larry Anderson.
- August 6, 2012 – More than 41,000 fans attend the night’s game against Atlanta, but it isn’t a sellout — ending a streak of 257 straight sellouts dating to July 2009. At the time, only Cleveland had a longer streak.
- August 6, 2022 – Released Odubel Herrera.
Philadelphia Baseball Birthdays for August 6
- Sam Mertes (born 1872) — Outfielder who broke into the majors with the Phillies in 1896 as part of a 10-season career; later won a World Series title with the 1905 New York Giants.
- Buck Thrasher (born 1889) — Right fielder who debuted with the Philadelphia Athletics in September 1916 at age 27, playing two seasons (1916–17) in Philadelphia.
- Hal Wiltse (born 1903) — Left-handed pitcher who appeared in one game for the Phillies in April 1931, the final outing of a four-season career that began with the Red Sox and Browns.
- Al Veach (born 1909) — Right-handed pitcher whose entire major-league career consisted of two starts for the Philadelphia Athletics in September 1935.
- Bud Hafey (born 1912) — Outfielder who closed out a three-year, four-team career with 18 games for the 1939 Phillies; cousin of Hall of Famer Chick Hafey.
- Tommy Reis (born 1914) — Relief pitcher who debuted with the Phillies in 1938 before being sold to the Boston Bees that same season; later served in the U.S. Army in Europe during WWII.
- John McGillen (born 1917) — Left-handed pitcher from nearby Eddystone, PA, who appeared in two games for the Philadelphia Athletics in April 1944 — his only major-league action.
- Ray Culp (born 1941) — Right-handed pitcher who went 43-32 for the Phillies from 1963–1966, making the 1963 All-Star team and finishing third in Rookie of the Year voting before later making a second All-Star team with Boston.
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