I would like to salute my father-in-law William Lange, who just passed away peacefully May 31 at the age of 91, by relaying a brief story about his father who was an infamous major league baseball player.
Ty Cobb, Joe DiMaggio, Tris Speaker – legendary major league baseball players all. There’s another man whose name belongs on this list: my wife’s grandfather, William Alexander Lange, Sr., but unless you’re a true-blue dyed-in-the wool aficionado of America’s greatest pastime, I doubt you have ever heard of him or any of the monikers he went by, including Little Eva, Big Bill, and The Port Townsend Boy.
But ask any major leaguer worth his stance and he’ll tell you that Big Bill Lange ranks among the best, even though he played seven short years just before the turn of the century. Fans who were fortunate enough to see him in action would recall long after he retired how they would marvel at his skills as a fielder, his daring base running, and his power at the plate. Lange also sported a hefty and deadly accurate arm, and his imposing six-foot-two-inch, 215-pound frame earned him at the time the accolade “the fastest big man in baseball.”
Lange, who was born in San Francisco in 1871 and ran away to Washington as a youngster to live with his brother Charlie, was only 20 years old when he fielded for the semi-pro Port Townsend Colts. Two years later in 1893 he was signed by the Chicago Colts, a National League club previously known as the White Stockings (which ultimately became the White Sox across town), which switched to the Orphans until becoming the Chicago Cubs in 1902.
Lange’s debut as a rookie was auspicious; he scored 92 times, had 88 RBIs, stole 47 bases, and batted .281, the only time in his major league career he averaged under .300. His stellar performance was no fluke. In 1895 he achieved his highest rankings by scoring 120 runs, knocking in 98 RBIs, stealing 67 bases, and batting .389, still the top individual season average in Chicago Cubs history. By the time he left the diamond in 1899, Lange’s career stats featured a batting average of .330, 578 RBIs, and 399 stolen bases.
For those who dismiss such statistics in the belief that modern day baseball didn’t begin until 1900, the game officially hasn’t changed since 1893 when Lange broke in, the year the pitching distance was modified from 50-feet to 60-feet-six-inches. Except for a new foul strike rule instituted in 1901, the delivery of major league baseball has remained the same to this day.
As one sportswriter put it quite poetically many years ago: “It makes me laugh to hear you guys | praise modern fielders to the skies | When you were tugging rubber nipples | I saw Bill Lange drive out his triples | and got past second on that hit | like Man o’ War when feeling fit. | Upon his ear I watched him slide | and come up with that old horsehide, | two hundred pounds of wild mustang | in center field was old Bill Lange.”
Sometime during Lange’s tenure, his teammates dubbed him Little Eva, hardly a nickname suited for 200 pounds of wild mustang, but apparently appropriate for a gentleman who rarely struck out with women, including his girlfriend Eva, whose constant presence in the press box proved Bill could steal hearts as well as bases.
It would be the charms of another lady many innings later whose disdain for hits, runs, and errors, and whose well-to-do father with equal perception forbade her to marry a lowly baseball player, that caused Lange to hang up his spikes at the young age of 28, despite the most lucrative offer from a team at that time.
“I had made up my mind to retire and given my promise to my bride,” he told a sportswriter years later. “When Boston proposed ten thousand dollars, I said, ‘get thee behind me Satan.’ I promised to quit the game, I’m going to quit it, and a little more of this kind of talk and we’ll all go crazy.”
Little Eva kept his vow and returned to San Francisco where he conquered real estate and insurance, but he continued to be a robust and popular ambassador for major league baseball here and abroad until his passing in 1950, a year after the death of his third wife Sara Griffith, who produced my father-in-law Bill Lange Jr. in 1928.
Big Bill, often lauded by sports scribes as “the premiere flycatcher of all time” (he once knocked a plank out of the centerfield wooden fence after catching a liner), was considered by his peers to be the best at his position. Hall of Famer Clark Griffith, owner of the Washington Senators, wrote, “I played with Bill Lange in Chicago for eight years. I have seen all the great outfielders – Speaker, Cobb, DiMaggio – in action, and I consider Bill Lange the equal of, if not better than, all other outfielders of all time.”
Connie Mack, the longest serving manager in baseball history, said, “I have seen them all but I have yet to see an outfielder whose all-around ability compares with Bill Lange in his prime.”
Big Bill didn’t play the required 10 years to herald Cooperstown consideration, but he just may be the greatest major leaguer never inducted into the Hall of Fame.