Arlie Latham

Arlie Latham called himself the Freshest Man on Earth, and for once a ballplayer's boast undersold him. He was the great clown of nineteenth century baseball, a heckling, cartwheeling third baseman whose antics from the coaching lines grew so maddening they helped put the coach's box in the rule book. He stole better than 700 bases and scored nearly 1,500 runs for the rowdy St. Louis Browns, then outlived almost everyone, coaching for John McGraw, organizing baseball in England, and working the press gate at the Polo Grounds into old age. He played the fool on purpose and lived to 92, sharp to the end. Few men have ever had as much fun in a baseball uniform.

The Dude from New Hampshire

Latham was born Walter Arlington Latham on March 15, 1860, in West Lebanon, New Hampshire, and reached the major leagues as a slight, fast, talkative young third baseman. The St. Louis Browns of the American Association signed him in 1883, and he found in owner Chris Von der Ahe's loud, brawling club the perfect stage for a natural performer. He could play, with quick hands and quicker feet, but it was the personality that made him famous, a nonstop stream of chatter, mockery, and showmanship no opponent could shut off. The fans loved him and called him the Dude for his sharp dress. He had found exactly the right team at exactly the right time.

The Clown Prince

Latham turned coaching the bases into a one man vaudeville act, and the act drove the rest of baseball crazy. He danced, sang, turned cartwheels, and heckled without mercy from the coaching lines, riding opposing pitchers until they lost their composure, and once, by legend, setting off a firecracker behind third base to rattle a rival. The disruption was so constant that the rules eventually fenced the coachers into a box to contain men like him. He was the first player whose comedy was a genuine part of his value, a draw who put people in the seats. No one had ever clowned quite the way Latham did.

Four Pennants

For all the clowning, Latham was a regular on a great team, the third baseman of the Browns club that won four straight American Association pennants from 1885 through 1888. He hit at the top of an order that carried Tip O'Neill, Bob Caruthers, and Dave Foutz, scoring runs in bunches and stealing bases at will. The Browns of those years were the most colorful and successful team in the Association, and Latham was their loudest voice and one of their busiest bats. He played the games as hard as he joked through them. The pennants were real, whatever the antics around them.

The Legs

Latham's real weapon was his speed, the fastest set of legs on a team full of them. He stole 742 bases in his career, a total that ranks among the most in history, and scored close to 1,500 runs from the top of the order. The stolen base figures come with the usual caveat of his era, when the rules credited steals more generously than they do now, but no caveat changes the basic fact that Latham terrorized the basepaths. He led the Association in steals and in runs in his best seasons, a leadoff man who turned a walk or a single into a run as fast as anyone alive. The legs were no joke, even if the man attached to them was.

The First Full Time Coach

Long after his playing days, Latham earned a second place in history, as the first full time coach the major leagues ever employed. John McGraw hired him for the New York Giants around 1909, when Latham was nearly fifty, to do for pay what he had always done for free, ride the opposition and spark his own side from the coaching lines. He even got into a few games, and by stealing a base in one of them he became, at 49, the oldest man ever to steal one. The clown had turned his act into a profession. He had been coaching the bases his whole life, and now someone finally paid him for it.

England and the King

When the world went to war, Latham went to England, and he stayed for years. He crossed the Atlantic during the First World War to organize baseball for American and Canadian soldiers, and he liked it enough to remain, promoting the game across Britain for the better part of two decades. The stories from those years run toward the tall, including one that has him teaching King George the Fifth how to throw and catch, and the best of them are hard to confirm and harder to resist. What's certain is that an aging American clown spent a long stretch of his life as baseball's ambassador to a country that never quite warmed to it. He came home in the 1920s, his accent a little changed and his enthusiasm not at all.

The Press Gate

Back in New York, Latham took a job tending the press gate at the Polo Grounds and later Yankee Stadium, a beloved relic greeting the writers who came to cover a game he'd helped shape. He kept at it into his eighties, one of the last men alive who remembered the American Association and the wild Browns of the 1880s. He died in 1952 at 92, having packed several lifetimes of mischief into one. The clown prince of nineteenth century baseball had outlasted the century itself and nearly everyone who played in it. He left behind a long trail of laughter and a line in the rule book that exists because of him.