Career
Chase attended Santa Clara College, where he played baseball. He signed his first contract with the Los Angeles Angels of the Class-A Pacific Coast League in 1904. The New York Highlanders selected Chase from Los Angeles in the 1904 Rule 5 draft on October 4, 1904.
Chase joined the Highlanders in 1905, and held out during March 1907, threatening to sign with the outlaw California League if the Highlanders did not increase his salary. Though he agreed to join the Highlanders in April 1907, he also insisted on playing in the California League during the winter. After the Highlanders fired manager Clark Griffith during the 1908 season, Chase held out and insisted he would not play for new manager Kid Elberfeld.
Chase served as player–manager in 1910 and 1911. He signed a three-year contract with the Yankees before the 1913 season, but they traded him to the Chicago White Sox for Babe Borton and Rollie Zeider on June 1, 1913. Before the 1914 season, Chase jumped from the White Sox to the Buffalo Buffeds of the Federal League.
Following a spell in the short-lived Federal League, he went to the Reds. In 1916, Chase led the NL with a .339 batting average. After Buck Herzog was fired as Reds manager in 1917, Chase was again passed over for management in favor of Christy Mathewson.
On February 19, 1919, the Reds traded Chase to the New York Giants for Walter Holke and Bill Rariden. It has long been rumored that the Giants acquired him after Mathewson let it be known he wanted nothing to do with Chase. However, this story is belied by the fact that Mathewson signed on with the Giants (where he had starred for many years as a pitcher) as assistant manager to John McGraw; moreover, after McGraw took a leave of absence from the team near the end of the 1919 season, Mathewson named Chase as first base coach.
Read more about this topic: Hal Chase
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“From a hasty glance through the various tests I figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating “Low Average Ability,” reserved usually for those just learning to speak the English Language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while another man hits it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“In time your relatives will come to accept the idea that a career is as important to you as your family. Of course, in time the polar ice cap will melt.”
—Barbara Dale (b. 1940)
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)