Mike Tiernan

Mike Tiernan spent his entire career in a New York Giants uniform, said almost nothing, and hit the ball as hard as anyone of his time. For thirteen seasons the quiet right fielder they called Silent Mike batted .311, drove out 106 home runs in a dead ball age, and twice led the National League in the long ball, all without a cross word for an umpire or a headline he chased. He came up with a Giants team full of future Hall of Famers and outlasted most of them, a fixture in right field while the franchise won and faded and won again. One May afternoon he hit a home run so far that two ballparks full of fans cheered it at once. He is one of the most overlooked outfielders of the 1890s, remembered, when he is remembered at all, for that one tremendous swing.

Silent Mike

Tiernan was born Michael Joseph Tiernan in Trenton, New Jersey, on January 21, 1867, a quiet, sober, even tempered young man in a game full of brawlers. He earned the nickname Silent Mike for a manner that set him apart from his era, rarely arguing with umpires, never baiting an opponent, steering wide of the press that swarmed the rougher stars. He let his bat do the talking, and it spoke plainly enough. From the moment he reached the major leagues he belonged to one team and one city, and he stayed for the whole of his career. Few players of any age were so good and so little trouble.

A Giant for Thirteen Years

Tiernan joined the New York Giants in 1887 and never wore another uniform, thirteen seasons of right field for the only club he knew. A left handed batter with a smooth, powerful stroke, he hit .311 for his career and reached his peak in 1896 at .369, one of the finest averages in the league that season. He scored runs by the hundred at the top of the Giants order, crossed the plate 147 times in 1889 to lead the National League, and walked often enough to start rallies and finish them. The Giants of his time ran hot and cold, contenders one year and also rans the next, but their right fielder was a constant in the lineup. He was the rare star who stayed put when staying put had gone out of fashion.

The Power

What set Tiernan apart was power, the thing the dead ball era rationed most strictly. He hit 106 home runs in his career, a total that tied the great Dan Brouthers for the fourth most of the nineteenth century, and he led the National League in the category twice, sharing the crown in 1890 and again in 1891 with Harry Stovey. He paced the league in slugging and total bases in 1890, the most dangerous bat in the New York order. In a time when a dozen home runs led the world, Tiernan kept hitting them year after year, a genuine slugger decades before the ball would carry. That power was the heart of his game, and it has aged better than almost anything else about him.

The Home Run Heard in Two Parks

On May 12, 1890, Tiernan hit the home run that outlived everything else he did. The Giants were tied in extra innings at the Polo Grounds, and next door, across a narrow alley, the rival Players League club was playing its own game in Brotherhood Park. In the bottom of the thirteenth Tiernan drove a pitch over the distant center field fence near the flagpole, some 410 feet away, and the ball rattled off the wall of the park next door. Fans at both games, who had been trading cheers across the fence all afternoon, erupted together for the blow. A writer that day swore the spot would be marked forever, though the marker was lost when the Players League folded a year later.

Among the Immortals

Tiernan played his whole career surrounded by men who would reach Cooperstown without him. The Giants of the late 1880s carried Roger Connor, Buck Ewing, Jim O'Rourke, and John Montgomery Ward, along with the pitchers Tim Keefe and Mickey Welch, and the young fireballer Amos Rusie joined before long. That club won back to back championships in 1888 and 1889, with Tiernan hitting in the middle of it. He held his own among the legends, an everyday star on a team of them, and stayed long after most had moved on. When the Hall of Fame later gathered up that Giants roster, it took nearly everyone but Mike Tiernan.

The Quiet Star

For all his production, Tiernan never went looking for the spotlight, and the spotlight returned the favor. He stayed loyal to the Giants even in 1890, when the Players League lured away most of the game's stars and he was a Brotherhood man at heart. "I didn't like the idea of deserting the boys," he said of the choice to stay, "but now that it is done, I am glad of it." Illness and injury began to wear at him after 1892, and the great seasons came less often as his thirties arrived. The Giants released him in the summer of 1899, and a quiet career ended as quietly as it had been played.

Bellevue

Tiernan's last years were hard and short. He ran a saloon on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan, lived out of the public eye, and contracted the tuberculosis that would kill him. In November 1918, at 51, he died at Bellevue Hospital, having checked in under an assumed name, a private man private to the end. He never appeared on a Hall of Fame ballot, lumped in memory with Jimmy Ryan and George Van Haltren among the 1890s outfielders the voters skipped. Bill James, sizing him up a century later, judged him a better man than ballplayer, which from so quiet a man might have been the verdict he wanted.