Deciding on “the best player you've never heard of” is a baseball pastime sure to involve arguments just as fruitless as those demanding a particular batter or pitcher be included in baseball’s Hall of Fame.
But Steve Steinberg and Lyle Spatz, baseball historians whose previous publications have delved deeply into baseball’s early days, the so-called Dead Ball Era, make a convincing case for Mike Donlin, “a rough and rowdy” baseball player who became an idol in New York before Babe Ruth arrived on the scene.
Their book, Mike Donlin, covers the career of the man Damon Runyon said was the most colorful player he ever saw as well as Donlin’s second career, on the stage and in the movies.
Born in Peoria, Donlin is now all but forgotten but played with some of the greats, players like Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson, Tris Speaker, and John McGraw. In 12 seasons, Donlin batted over .330, earning a reputation both as a dynamic hitter and one of baseball’s bad boys, tormenting umpires and managers alike.
A heavy drinker, Donlin got into scrapes more serious than the occasional bar fight or on-field skirmish. He did prison time and was suspended from pro ball for a year after being found guilty of assaulting a woman in 1902. But he was back playing baseball for the Cincinnati Reds in 1903, a year when he batted .351, second only to Honus Wagner’s .355.
Steinberg said that Donlin’s celebrity status blossomed as a member of the New York Giants, one of several teams he played for. Managed by McGraw, the Giants won the World Series in 1905.
But the Donlin book also has a romantic side, offering a portion of the article James Hopper wrote for Collier’s magazine in 1908: “Two years ago Big Mike Donlin was a reckless, violent, husky-voiced, swaggering brawler. Then he met Mabel Hite, who, discerning a chance for that redemption which woman so dearly loves, gently led him to the altar. Mike Donlin now is a …lithe, clean-hewed, supple athlete; his features made firm through physical and moral health, have regained lines almost classical.”
As the most prominent vaudeville actress in the country at the time, Mabel Hite was just what the doctor needed when it came to taming the wild Donlin. The team of Hite and Donlin was a vaudeville hit with crowds and critics alike, said Steinberg. “If you miss him (Donlin), you do yourself an injustice,” said a reviewer at Variety magazine.
But the marriage and her theatrical career were cut short when Hite died of cancer in 1912 at the age of 29. Trained by his wife, Donlin gravitated to the stage. His last baseball season ended in an unsuccessful comeback attempt in 1914 but he married actress Rita Ross and moved to Hollywood where he became a drinking buddy of actors John Barrymore and Buster Keaton. Among the 100 movies he appeared in, mostly in small parts, was the role of a Union general in Keaton’s The General, considered one of the comedian’s greatest films.
Donlin died in 1933, remembered more as a likable actor than the brawling ballplayer “He was something of a headache but more often a joy to me, and player…a fighter, the kind that used to make for winning teams in the days I played the game,” said former manager McGraw who also recalled humorist Will Rogers telling him of his fondness for Donlin.
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