Wee Willie Keeler

Maryland Historical Society

Baseball fans are accepted as easily the most studious of the audiences for major league sports. But those fans, as baseball enters its third century, are having a hard time. The sheer quantity of box-score names-about 17,000, in the count kept by the Cooperstown Hall of Fame-scares fans, who settle for the statistics of the season now going on, or just past. Even the almanacs tend to lighten this load-by quietly dropping the nineteenth Century altogether.

What a loss-to Baltimore in particular. During the century just past, several Orioles were top performers. The 1900s Orioles won half a dozen pennants-though never two in a row. Tell that (if you could) to the Orioles of the 1890s, who won three in a row. Cal Ripken was super, yes, Frank and Brooks Robinson were marvelous, and Jim Palmer won 268 games. Nicknames are still enough to identify them. But as for John and Joe, and Hughey and Wizard and Robby, can you supply the last names?

And how about Willie?

His last name was originally O'Kelleher but, back in his native Brooklyn, where he had been born on March 3, 1872, some amateur-league scorekeeper shortened it to Keeler. Before or since, the majors have never had another Keeler.

Before him, or since, no other batter-standing 5 feet 4 and weighing 140 pounds-has hit the ball so often and so safely. In each of his five seasons as the Orioles' rightfielder, 210 was the least number of Keeler's base hits. In 1897, Keeler hit safely in the schedule's first 44 games-a consecutive-games record that lasted exactly 44 years. For the full year 1897, his batting average (tattoo this one on your forearm) was .424-and his 239 hits led the league. All this, with far fewer at-bats than today: back before night games, 128 comprised a playing season, over against today's 162.

At Union Park (on the southeast corner of Barclay and 25th), Keeler, rounding the bases, was a blur. In 1894, his first Oriole year, aged 22, Keeler hit 22 triples-still the Oriole record.

To people who study baseball intently, one play is the rarest, the choicest of all. Okay, have you ever been there, to behold an inside-the-park home run? Willie Keeler, swinging not for the fences but for the spaces between infielders and outfielders, in his career hit 33 home runs-all but three, inside the park.

The Oriole manager, Ned Hanlon, got Willie in a trade, and found him quiet and intense-a team player. He wasn't much on night life. He shrugged off the common nickname, Wee Willie. As 1898 ended, Keeler was one of the players-along with himself-whom Hanlon sold to Brooklyn. His career tailed off. Keeler died in Brooklyn, at age 50, on January 1, 1923. At some point, he attracted the Gilbert and Sullivan fans-this "foot-loosety, run-like-the-deucety young man." The while, Baltimore has never done anywhere near as much for him as Willie Keeler did for Baltimore.