Rabbit Maranville: You can’t make this stuff up

November 22, 2024 Wiliam A. Gralnick

Rabbit Maranville is seen in this 1921 file photo. The Pittsburgh Pirate shortstop was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1954. AP Photo

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Sometimes a ball player is so interesting, so highly regarded, so off-the-wall, that the writer has to bend the rules a little rather than be patient. This piece about Rabbit Maranville fills that bill. He spent but one year playing in Brooklyn and did so when the team wasn’t even called the Dodgers. It was called the Brooklyn Robins after its manager Wilbur Robinson. Every month I write about Dodgers who had careers with the team both during the Deadball era and the Boys of Summer era. One year? Well, it counts. He was a November baby and this is November. Maranville grabbed my attention because, as SABR intimates, he was known as much for his zany escapades and funny stories as for anything he accomplished on the diamond, but his outstanding glove work kept him in the big leagues for 23 seasons and eventually earned him a plaque in Cooperstown. He’s worth writing and reading about.

“Character” seems to be the word that best fits this Hall of Famer, who played for the Robins in 1926. Called by sportswriter historian John Holway, “The Joe Garagiola” of his era, Maranville, was a superb shortstop, and a born prankster. Writing in the Sports Arsenal, Sandlapper Spike (I kid you not) wrote this: “Maranville once got a hit off Carl Mays by making him laugh so hard he couldn’t maintain his control. He was in the dugout during the infamous Babe Herman-three men on third base play; when Wilbert Robinson asked Maranville what had happened, Maranville said, “There’s three men on third and if they hang on long enough I’ll go down and make a quartet out of it.”

Once during a pitcher-vs.-batter fight, Maranville distracted everyone, including the fans, by going into the first base coach’s box during the fracas and pantomiming a fight against himself, pretending to knock himself out. (Judge Landis thanked him later for that one.) Entertaining the crowd during a slow part of the game with various pantomime activities was one of his specialties.”

Maranville was an after-hours main-stay who loved to have a good time. After a few drinks to help get up his nerve, he would pull stunts like walking hotel ledges, swallowing goldfish (reports differ on whether or not he actually swallowed the fish but not that he caught it in his mouth from a hotel fountain), and tossing firecrackers. Authors Bob Carroll with John Holway (The Games Funniest Characters and baseballguru.com) edited them in Maranville’s book, “Run, Rabbi, Run: The Hilarious and Mostly True Tales of Rabbit Maranville.” Frank Russo added to the stories on deadball.com from his book, “Heroes of the Deadball Era.” Here are a few. He got a teammate to chase him through Times Square yelling, Stop, Thief Stop!” He’d pull his cap down over one ear for photographers so he’d look like he was from Spanky and Our Gang. Gunshots and screams from his hotel rang out one night which brought everyone running. It was a prank. After a bad call, he was known to hand an umpire a pair of glasses. When he was fired from managing the Cubs no doubt for walking through a train car of sleeping ball players pouring water on their heads and yelling, “No one sleeps on my team, especially at night,” he posed as a newsboy in front of Ebbets field calling, “Read all about it! Read all about it! Maranville fired by Cubs!”

While he was the shortstop for the 1914 “Miracle Braves”, after the World Series, he and several of his teammates decided to form a Vaudeville act and go out on tour. The act consisted of songs, anecdotes, and recreations of plays in the World Series. In Lewiston, Maine one night the Rabbit declared to the audience: “I will now demonstrate how I stole second base off Bullet Joe Bush in the Series.” Sprinting off a mythical first base, he slid into a picture-perfect slide….unfortunately, he miscalculated the distance and landed on a drum in the orchestra pit, breaking his leg!

Lost in all his shenanigans is the fact that he was always a superior fielder, famous for his basket catch of high infield flies. The Baseball Hall of Fame stats show that he led NL shortstops in putouts each year from 1914 to 1919 (except for 1918, which he spent in the Navy), assists twice, double plays three times, and fielding average once. Maranville was a baseball player who led the league in defensive WAR (wins above replacement player) three times. His 4.2 mark in 1914 is in the Top 15 all-time in that category. His stats compiled by MLB.com show 2,605 hits from 10,078 at bats. He scored almost 1300 runs and knocked in 884 RBIs. He stole 291 bases. While he batted .258 lifetime, he had an OBP of .318 and an OPS of .658. The reader must remember that these are deadball era stats. But it was his signature catch that so many talked and wrote about.

Kevin Clow writes in the Canadian Baseball Blog about Maranville who did a stint in Canada that Maranville was the Ozzie Smith of his generation, Maranville still holds the big league record for most career assists (8,967) and putouts (5,139). A credit to just how good he was defensively is that he finished second in the 1914 National League MVP voting, despite hitting only .246. His golden glove would help propel the Boston Braves to an unlikely World Series triumph that same season.

A word about those fly ball catches. Maranville described it this way. “I was the talk of the town because of my peculiar way of catching a fly ball. They later named it the Vest-Pocket Catch. Boston wasn’t drawing any too good, but it seemed like everyone that came out to the park came to see me make my peculiar catch or get hit on the head.”

One writer described it this way. “Maranville settled himself under pop-ups with what seemed to be total unconcern, arms at his side; as the ball plummeted towards earth, apparently ignored, he suddenly brought his hands together at waist level and let the ball fall into the pocket of his glove.”

Maranville went on, “Many of the players passed different remarks about my catch which wouldn’t go in print,” According to SABR Rabbit said, “I do, however, remember what Jimmy Sheckard said: ‘I’ll bet you he don’t drop three balls in his career, no matter how long or short he may be in the game. Notice the kid is perfectly still, directly under the ball, and in no way is there any vibration to make the ball bounce out of his glove.’”

He was also part of the famous infield team of Schmidt to Evers to Maranville. “Tinkers and Chance!” you are yelling. “No, Schmidt and Maranville.”

Boston had purchased second baseman Johnny Evers from the Chicago Cubs during the previous winter, and he and Rabbit gave the Braves the best middle infield in baseball. Though no sportswriter ever penned a poem about Maranville-to-Evers-to-Schmidt, that combination turned far more double plays in 1914 than Tinker, Evers, and Chance ever did in any one season. “It was just Death Valley, whoever hit a ball down our way,” Rabbit recalled. “Evers with his brains taught me more baseball than I ever dreamed about. He was psychic. He could sense where a player was going to hit if the pitcher threw the ball where he was supposed to.”

Evers’ omniscience paid off in a big way during Game Two of the World Series. Heading into the bottom of the ninth, the Braves led, 1-0, but the Athletics had men on first and second and only one out. The batter was Eddie Murphy, a fast left-handed hitter who Maranville claimed hadn’t hit into a double play all season. Rabbit was already playing only 10 feet from second base, but Evers looked over and told him to move closer. The young shortstop followed orders, moving only five feet from the bag. Bill James was about to deliver his pitch when Evers called time and instructed Rabbit to move even closer. Maranville moved within one yard of second base. On James’ first pitch, Murphy hit a rifle shot between the pitcher’s legs. Rabbit was practically standing on second when he fielded the grounder and fired the ball to first to complete a game-ending double play.

Evers and Maranville finished one-two in the 1914 Chalmers Award voting, and that off-season they were approached by Bill Fleming, a scout for the Federal League’s Chicago Whales. “We met him and he laid down $100,000 in front of Evers and $50,000 in front of me as a bonus with a three-year contract to play for the Chicago Feds,” Rabbit recalled. “Evers refused and so did I.” Maranville remained a fixture in the Braves infield for another six years, this from the Fenway Park Diaries.

Andrew Martin, writing for Medium, uncovered a third side of Maranville, someone who loved the game he played. He wrote: “He (Maranville) spoke at length about the ban on babbling in an article that appeared in the April 14, 1932 edition of the Boston Globe. Baseball had passed a no-talking rule. Ball players were prohibited from talking to anyone not on their team. It seemed he was as impacted as if he had been deprived of a favorite bat or his best glove.” Martin quotes Maranville as saying,

“It’s the new rule the league put in — no talking to rival ball players, no anything friendly and pleasant anymore. What are they trying to do to baseball, anyway? It’s getting like office work, and you can’t even talk to the rest of the clerks.

“Just think of it: if I walk over to the stands and say hello to my wife, I get a $5 fine slapped on me. And can you imagine what that would do to me if I didn’t?”

Martin continued, “The idea that Maranville had to ignore his wife in the stands during the game, thus earning her ire, is a funny one. However, the shortstop seemed sincere in how much impact he believed the rule change would have:

“’ Look what it does to baseball. You can’t sign scorecards for kids, or baseballs anymore, something that’s been making friends for the game for years. Even a manager can’t talk to his own club owner unless the owner is in the box next to the dugout. Suppose the owner was making a trade during a ball game and he yelled to the manager to come over from the sidelines. What then? Why, $5 fine, that’s what.

“No matter where we’re playing, we come out on the field and a lot of folks holler, ‘Hello, Rabbit,’ and try to get some fun started. And what do I do now? I can’t even turn and holler back. They look at each other and say, ‘Well, what do you think of that high-hat stiff?’”

“Maranville was a baseball purist. He was a hard-nosed player but also saw the game as a social opportunity to interact with players and fans alike. As the game tightened its grip on what players could say and do, or not say and do, he was not pleased with the direction it went. If he were playing today, he’d likely not be able to even recognize it from when he played his way into Cooperstown immortality.”

There is but one more question to answer about Maranville aside from his birth (Nov. 11, 1891) and death (Jan 6, 1954)). Why was he called Rabbit? Well, like many about whom stories are told, there are variations. Some say it was his ears. Others his speed. His sister was to have said that he never stayed in one place and hopped about like a rabbit. Who knows? Only his parents who named him…Walter James Vincent Maranville.