Miller Huggins

Position: Second Baseman
Bats: Both  •  Throws: Right
5-6, 140lb (168cm, 63kg)
Born: March 27, 1878 in Cincinnati, OH
Died: September 25, 1929 in New York, NY
Buried: Spring Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati, OH
School: University of Cincinnati (Cincinnati, OH)
Debut: April 15, 1904 (2,600th in major league history)
vs. CHC 3 AB, 1 H, 0 HR, 0 RBI, 1 SB
Last Game: September 13, 1916
vs. PHI 2 AB, 0 H, 0 HR, 0 RBI, 0 SB
Hall of Fame: Inducted as Manager in 1964. (Voted by Veteran’s Committee)
View Miller Huggins’s Page at the Baseball Hall of Fame (plaque, photos, videos).
Full Name: Miller James Huggins
Nicknames: Hug or Mighty Mite
View Player Info from the B-R Bullpen
View Player Bio from the SABR BioProject

Nine Players Who Debuted in 1904

Sherry Magee
Frank Schulte
Miller Huggins
George Stovall
Art Devlin
Gabby Street
Ed Walsh
Hooks Wiltse
Charley O’Leary

All-Time Teammate Team

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Notable Events and Chronology 

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The smart, scrawny 5’6″ Huggins was a first-rate second baseman before he became famous for managing the Yankees to their first six pennants and three World Championships. He was fast and sure-handed afield; his record is dotted with games in which he handled 15 chances, or figured in three double plays. He led the league in putouts, assists, double plays, and fielding once each, and twice in errors. The Mighty Mite was the ideal leadoff man, a switch-hitter who coaxed 1,002 career walks (four times leading the league) and stole some 50 bases a season (though stolen bases were not tabulated during his six early years with Cincinnati). Not a long-ball hitter, he did have three triples in a game in 1904.

The Cardinals acquired Huggins in 1910. By 1913 he was player-manager, and by 1917 had retired to the bench. He prodded two third-place finishes out of his nondescript team, and guided a green and awkward Rogers Hornsby through his first ML seasons. Holder of a law degree (though he never practiced) and a shrewd investor in the stock market, Huggins was businessman enough to think he could buy the St. Louis club. His bid rebuffed, he resigned. Ban Johnson, the opportunistic president of the American League, promptly urged Jacob Ruppert, the Yankees’ principal owner, to grab Huggins. The manager’s record was not distinguished, but he was a sound baseball man, and Johnson was happy to help steal him from the NL.

Together with imperious Ed Barrow, the GM, Huggins developed the slugging Yankee teams that ended the dead-ball era forever. A mediocre lot when he arrived, they were among the all-time greats at his death. They were a bunch of carousers and bad actors until an appalling slump in 1925 and the $5,000 fine and nine-day suspension of Babe Ruth. With Ruppert’s backing, Huggins brought his unruly crew to heel, and established himself as boss, beginning the club’s tradition of Yankee pride. Though history recalls the pillage of Harry Frazee’s Red Sox as the making of the Yankees, Gehrig, Earle Combs, and Tony Lazzeri were discovered elsewhere, and others (Bob Meusel and Herb Pennock, for example) blossomed under Huggins’s encouragement and handling. When he died of erysipelas in 1929, at age 50, judgment was nearly universal that Huggins was in a managerial class by himself. A plaque in his honor was placed in Yankee Stadium’s centerfield in 1932.

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Factoids, Quotes, Milestones and Odd Facts

Quotes From Miller Huggins
“A good catcher is the quarterback, the carburator, the lead dog, the pulse taker, the traffic cop and sometimes a lot of unprintable things, but no team gets very far without one.”

Teams Miller Huggins Managed
St. Louis Cardinals (1913-1917)
New York Yankees (1918-1929)

Best Season: 1927
For years, the ’27 Yankees have been hailed as the greatest team of all-time. The claim started almost before the 1927 season ended, and reached new heights after the Yankees disposed of the Pirates in four straight games in the World Series. But is this team the greatest of all-time? Dozens of books and even more articles have been written on this team. At least five computer simulation tournaments have been run to determine if they are the greatest. Most of the time they have come our on top. The biggest thing the ’27 Yankees have going for them is Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Not only were they the best two players in baseball in 1927, but they were both in their prime, Ruth at the end of his prime and Gehrig at the beginning. No other team has ever had two stars of such magnitude in the middle of their lineup. Imagine Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams together or Willie Mays and Hank Aaron, or Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez. Then, imagine them leading their team to a 110-win season and a sweep of their opponent in the World Series. In 1927 it was reality. The most glaring weakness of the 1927 Yankees are their bench and pitching staff. Hoyt and Pennock are in the Hall of Fame but neither are considered all-time greats, merely very good pitchers who had the fortune to play for the best team in baseball. After those two, you have Urban Shocker, Dutch Reuther and George Pipgras, hardly household names. Of course, the ’27 Yankees pitching staff was great that year but our point is that the staff doesn’t elicit all-time great status. But with a lineup consisting of four future Hall of Famers (Earle Combs and Tony Lazzeri join the Big Two), perhaps the pitching is good enough. What we do know is that every time a team gets off to a hot start or rolls through a season to the World Series, they will be compared to the 1927 New York Yankees. A few of the team to feel that comparison were the 1954 Indians, 1961 Yankees, 1975 Reds, 1984 Tigers, 1986 Mets, 1988 A’s, 1998 Yankees and the 2001 Mariners. Three of those teams failed to win the World Series, in fact one didn’t even make it to the Fall Classic. The legend of the ’27 Yankees will probably live forever, and the long shadow they cast may never be erased.

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