Playing Career
Griffith entered the American Association in 1891, pitching 226 1⁄3 innings and winning 14 games for the St. Louis Browns and Boston Reds. He began the following season with the Chicago Colts, and in 1894 began a string of six consecutive seasons with 20 or more victories, compiling a 21–14 record and 4.92 ERA. Griffith lowered his ERA over the following years to a low of 1.88 in 1898, the lowest mark in the league.
As a pitcher, Griffith was known for doctoring the ball; he frequently threw spitballs, cut balls and scuff balls. He also claimed to have invented the screwball.
When Ban Johnson, a longtime friend, announced plans to form the American League, Griffith was one of the ringleaders in getting National League players to jump ship. Using the cover of his post as vice president of the League Protective Players' Association (a nascent players' union), Griffith persuaded 39 players to sign on with the new league for the 1901 season. Griffith himself signed on with the Chicago White Stockings as player-manager. He won 20 games for the final time in his career and led the White Stockings to the first AL pennant with an 83–53 record.
At Johnson's suggestion, Griffith left Chicago in 1903 to take over as manager of the New York Highlanders. The Highlanders had just moved from Baltimore, and Johnson knew that for the league to be successful, it needed a strong franchise in the nation's biggest city. After a falling-out with the Highlanders' ownership, Griffith was fired during the 1908 season.
Griffith returned to the National League as manager of the Cincinnati Reds in 1909. In 1912, again at Johnson's suggestion, he returned to the American League as manager of the Washington Senators. At the time, the franchise had little going for it other than star pitcher Walter Johnson. In the American League's first 12 years, the Senators had never had a winning record or finished higher than sixth. Griffith engineered one of the biggest turnarounds in major league history, leading the Senators to second place. In nine years, his Washington teams only twice finished below fifth in the eight-team league.
During his managing tenure, Griffith had a tradition of treating the fans to a farce game as the final game of the season. This tradition is a factor in the inflation of Walter Johnson's minuscule ERA (from 1.09 to 1.14) in 1913.
For all practical purposes, Griffith retired as a player in 1907, though he made brief appearances on the mound for the Reds (1909) and Senators (1912, 1913 and 1914).
Read more about this topic: Clark Griffith
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