Phil Douglas
“Shufflin’” Phil Douglas was a big, talented pitcher who, not unlike many of his peers, enjoyed alcohol. Douglas just enjoyed it a little too much. It was one thing for a ballplayer to overindulge, but Douglas had a penchant for, “vacations,” his euphemism for benders. As Cubs manager Fred Mitchell would later say of Douglas, “There was no harm in that fellow. He didn’t fight with the boys, or burn down houses. It was just that I never knew where the hell he was, or if he was fit to work.”
Teams were regularly intrigued by Douglas’ talent, but so scared off by his personal habits that he would be quickly released. It happened with his first team, the White Sox, who brought Douglas aboard for three games, then let him go in 1911. He dropped back to the minors, then had stints with the Reds, Dodgers and Cubs before going back to the minors. In 1917, the Cubs brought him back up to Chicago, and though he went 14-20 that year, the team behind him was weak and his ERA was not bad (2.55). Douglas seemed to have a spot in the ’18 Cubs rotation.
In February, though, Douglas underwent an appendectomy and was slated to be out for the first part of the season. He could ill afford to lose his baseball pay—in addition to a drinking problem,
After undergoing an appendectomy, Phil Douglas was productive for the 1918 Cubs. (Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.) Douglas was perpetually short on money, and The Sporting News noted, “Phil says he lives down in Tennessee on a farm so poor that a rabbit passing through has to carry his rations.”
Douglas did finally return to Chicago in May, and made his debut start on June 6, tossing a three-hit shutout in Philadelphia. He began the season 5-1, a great boost to the rotation, though he slipped and wound up at 10-9.
Douglas did not make a start in the ’18 World Series, though he did have an enormous impact on the result. It was a wild throw from Douglas on a routine bunt play in the bottom of the eighth inning that allowed the Red Sox to score the winning run in Game 4. It was the only inning that Douglas pitched in the series.
“Shufflin’” Phil did not last long with the Cubs. He was traded to John McGraw’s Giants the following summer. Douglas caused headaches for McGraw, who refused to put up with Douglas’ “vacations.” McGraw assigned a chaperone to Douglas, and kept operatives on him to ensure he remained sober. McGraw’s system worked. Douglas was 14-10 in 1920 and 15-10 in 1921.
He was 11-4 and having his best year in 1922 when he slipped out of sight of McGraw’s spies and took a “vacation.” He was eventually found and tossed into the West End Sanitarium. When he was released and brought back to the club, he sent a strange letter to former Cubs teammate Les Mann, who was then with the Cardinals, one of the teams battling the Giants for the pennant. Douglas proposed that he would quit the team if Mann and his teammates came up with, “the goods.” “So you see the fellows,” Douglas wrote, “and if you want to send a man over here with the goods, and I will leave for home on the next train, send him to my house so nobody will know, and send him at night.”
Douglas, it seemed, was trying to throw the pennant race. Mann turned the letter over to his manager, Branch Rickey, who passed it on to Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis. After meeting with McGraw, Landis banned Douglas from baseball.
Douglas died in 1962 after suffering his third stroke.
