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He was a left-handed hitter who batted .285 over the course of 16
seasons, and Clark Griffith called him Washington's greatest centerfielder, claiming
that he played the position more shallow than any man in baseball. Yet
Clyde "Deerfoot" Milan achieved his greatest fame as a
base stealer. After Milan supplanted Ty
Cobb as the American League's stolen-base leader by pilfering 88 bases in
1912 and 75 in 1913, F. C. Lane of Baseball Magazine called him
"Milan the Marvel, the Flying Mercury of the diamond, the man who
shattered the American League record, and the greatest base runner of the
decade." It was hyperbole, of course; Cobb re-claimed the AL
record in 1915 by stealing 96 bases and went on to swipe far more bases
over the decade than Milan, but Deerfoot stole
a total of 481 during the Deadball Era, ranking
third in the AL behind only Cobb (765) and Eddie Collins (564).
The son of a blacksmith, Jesse Clyde Milan (pronounced "millin") was born on March 25, 1887, in Linden,
Tennessee, a quiet hamlet of about 700 residents nestled in the hills
above the Buffalo River, 65 miles southwest of Nashville. He was one
of eight children (four boys and four girls), and his younger brother
Horace also took up professional baseball, briefly joining him in the Washington
outfield in 1915 and 1917. Another younger brother, Frank, became a
noted Broadway actor, co-starring alongside Humphrey Bogart in the famed
original staging of The Petrified Forest. Baseball was almost unknown in
rural Middle Tennessee where the Milans grew
up, and Clyde told Lane that he didn't
play much of the sport as a youngster. "To show what little
experience I really had, I will say that in 1903 I played in just nine
games of baseball, and the following season I didn't play the game at
all," he recalled. Clyde's
chief sporting interest in those years was hunting for quail and wild
turkey with his two setters, Dan and Joe.
In 1905 Clyde traveled several days to join a semipro team in Blossom, Texas, after
reading an advertisement that the manager of the club was looking for
players. There was a great rivalry that year between Blossom and the
neighboring town of Clarksville. "Dode Criss, now with St. Louis,
was the star pitcher and batter of the Clarksville
team, and he surely was some hitter," Milan told a reporter in
1910. "Well, we played Clarksville and I not only hit Criss
hard, but in the ninth inning, with the bases full, I guess I made the
most remarkable catch off of his bat that I have ever made in my
life. I don't know today how I ever got near the ball, but I nailed
it and was a hero in Blossom thereafter." Milan
ended up joining Blossom's rivals, but he wasn't with the Clarksville team
very long before the North Texas League disbanded in mid-July due to an
epidemic of yellow fever. Milan then
finished up the season in the Missouri Valley League, with the South
McAlester Miners in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma).
During his short stint in Clarksville,
however, Clyde managed to meet his
future bride, Margaret Bowers, whom he visited each offseason
for the next eight years. The couple ended up marrying after the
1913 season and eventually made their home in Clarksville where they raised two
daughters.
Milan began the 1906 season by hitting .356 for Shawnee (Indian Territory) of the South Central
League, but the team again disbanded before Milan received his pay. Disgusted with
professional baseball, he was thinking about quitting when he received an
invitation to join Wichita
of the Western Association. "I felt none too sure that I could
make good there, for the company was much faster," Clyde
recalled. That partial season in Wichita
saw him hit just .211, but he returned in 1907 and batted .304 with 38
stolen bases in 114 games, attracting the attention of Washington manager Joe Cantillon, who had seen him in a spring
exhibition. That summer Cantillon
dispatched injured catcher Cliff Blankenship to Wichita
with orders to purchase Milan's contract,
then go to Weiser, Idaho,
to scout and possibly sign Walter Johnson. In later years Clyde
loved to relate Blankenship's remarks during his contract signing:
"He told me that he was going out to Idaho to look over some young phenom. 'It looks like
a wild goose chase and probably a waste of train fare to look over that
young punk,' Blankenship said." Milan cost the Nats
$1,000, while Johnson was secured for a $100 bonus plus train fare.
Milan and Johnson had a lot in common: They were
the same age, they both hailed from rural areas--Washington
outfielder Bob Ganley started calling Milan "Zeb," a common nickname for players from small
towns--and they were both quiet, reserved, and humble. Naturally,
they became hunting companions and inseparable friends, and eventually
they became the two best players on the Senators team. "Take Milan and his roommate, Walter Johnson, away from Washington, and
the town would about shut up shop, as far as base ball is
concerned," wrote a reporter in 1911.
But stardom was not immediate for Milan. After
making his debut with the Senators on August 19, 1907, he played
regularly in center field for the rest of the season and batted a
respectable .279 in 48 games. In 1908, however, Milan batted just .239, and the following
year he slumped to .200, with just 10 stolen bases in 130 games. Cantillon wanted to send him to the minors and
purchase an outfielder who could hit, but the Senators were making so
little money that they couldn't afford a replacement. Fortunately for Washington, Jimmy McAleer took over as manager in 1910 and immediately
recognized the young center fielder's potential. Under McAleer's tutelage, Milan bounced back to hit .279 with 44
steals, and in 1911 he became a full-fledged star by batting .315 with 58
steals.
Milan's peak was from 1911 to 1913 when he played in every game but one,
batted over .300 each season, and averaged almost 74 stolen bases per
season. In 1912 he finished fourth in the Chalmers Award voting, and
his American League record-breaking total of 88 steals would have been 91
if Washington's game against St. Louis on August
9th hadn't been rained out in the third inning. Running into Milan on a train that summer, Billy Evans, who had
umpired Milan's
first game back in 1907, remarked on his wonderful improvement in every
department of the game, base running in particular. "When I
broke in, I thought all a man with speed had to do was get on in some way
and then throw in the speed clutch," Milan told the umpire. "I
watched with disgust while other players much slower than me stole with
ease on the same catcher who had thrown me out. It finally got
through my cranium that a fellow had to do a lot of things besides run
wild to be a good base runner. I used to have a habit of going down on
the second pitch, but the catchers soon got wise to it and never failed
to waste that second ball, much to my disadvantage. Now I try to
fool the catcher by going down any old time. Changing my style of slide
has also helped me steal many a base that would have otherwise resulted
in an out. I used to go into the bag too straight, making it an easy
matter for the fielder to put the ball on me, but I soon realized the
value of the hook slide."
In 1914 Milan
suffered a broken jaw and missed six weeks of the season after colliding
with right fielder Danny Moeller. He rebounded to play in at least 150
games in each of the next three seasons, 1915 to 1917, and he continued
to play regularly through 1921, batting a career-high .322 in 1920. Griffith appointed Milan to manage the Nats
in 1922 but the job didn't agree with him; he suffered from ulcers as the
club finished sixth, and he was fired after the season amidst reports
that he was "too easy-going."
That marked the end of his major-league playing career, but he continued
to play in the minors in Minneapolis in
1923, while serving as player-manager at New Haven
in 1924, and Memphis
in 1925 and 1926. After retiring as an active player, Milan coached for Washington
in 1928 and 1929 and managed Birmingham
from 1930 to 1935 and Chattanooga
from 1935 to 1937. He also scouted for Washington in 1937 and served as a
coach for the Senators from 1938 through 1952.
On March 3, 1953, Clyde Milan died from a heart attack at a hospital in Orlando, Florida,
two hours after collapsing in the locker room at Tinker Field. Three
weeks short of his 66th birthday, he had insisted on hitting fungoes to the infielders during both the morning and
afternoon workouts, despite the 80-degree heat. He was buried in Clarksville Cemetery in his adopted hometown.
Note
This biography originally appeared in David Jones, ed., Deadball Stars of the American League (Washington, D.C.:
Potomac Books, Inc., 2006).
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