Forgotten Stars: Let’s Remember Cecil Travis

Gary Livacari

1 year ago

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We welcome back Michael Keedy today with an interesting essay featuring a ball player who I have to admit has flown completely under my radar, Cecil Travis (shown above with baseball clown, Nick Altrock). I’ve been at this for almost ten years and have failed to mention him even once! But, as Michael demonstrates, Cecil Travis was a fine ball player and a strong case can be made he should be in the Hall (Michael and I plan on pursuing this). Check out Michael’s essay and see if you agree. – GL

Another Edition of Baseball’s Forgotten Stars:

Let’s Remember Cecil Travis

Although “hardly a man is now alive” who can actually remember 1941, most of today’s baseball scholars and fans still think of that halcyon season as the greatest in major league history. We may not have been too conscious of our idyllic surroundings 82 years ago, but we’re pretty certain the National League champion Dodgers finally cast aside the “Daffiness Boys” image that had plagued them for nearly two decades following their last pennant-winning campaign in 1920. The Mighty Bombers from the Bronx, meanwhile, were in the early stages of an astounding run of championship seasons that would see them carry home a whopping 21 American League flags and 16 world titles in just 28 years, 1936-63.

Heinie Manush, Buddy Myer, Joe Kuhl, Cecil Travis, Johnny Stone (Leslie Jones collection)

The “Gold Dust Twins” of Harold (Pee Wee) Reese and Harold (Pete) Reiser took the Borough of Brooklyn by storm that summer. Six years before a rookie of the year was first recognized in either league, in his first full season in the majors 22-year-old Pistol Pete won the National League batting title with a .343 average. (This intrepid and star-crossed fly-chaser would later be anointed by manager Leo Durocher as the one five-tool player greater than Willie Mays.) Teammate Dolph Camilli, MVP of the league, led in homers (34) and RBI (120), and starting pitchers Whitlow Wyatt and Kirby Higbe tied for most wins (22). These are all stats that many watchful students of the game, particularly Dodger fans, can recite by heart — or nearly so — even today.

But over in the American League, an immortal pair of competing icons set the entire world of baseball on fire all summer long. Starting in mid-May, Joe Dimaggio quietly launched his pursuit of one of the most cherished milestones in sports history by collecting a routine single in a lop-sided loss to the White Sox, and numbers-minded fans began to notice that a 22-year-old Ted Williams, hitting a cool .429 by the end of that month, was threatening to bat .400 for the season, as doubtful as that goal might have seemed at the time. (The magic numbers “56” and “.406,” proven unattainable for four-score and more years now, have been permanently emblazoned in our collective memory since July 17, when Joltin’ Joe’s streak was finally snapped, and September 28, 1941, when Teddy Ballgame went 6-for-8 to climb back above .400 in a season-ending doubleheader against Philadelphia.)

All of us, young and old, “remember” these last two landmarks, having long since committed them to a trove of obsessive childhood memories. We hardly have to look them up. But who can call to mind a 27-year-old hitting machine, modestly completing his eighth season at shortstop for an obscure Washington ball club back in ’41? As your faithful scribe can now attest, not even today’s high-tech version of Artificial Intelligence (AI) knows the name of the man who finished second to The Splendid Splinter in hitting that year (.359); or, that the same man led all of baseball by a country mile in hits, with 218. AI isn’t aware that this forgotten marvel bested Joe D., his nearest competitor, by 25 base hits, that he topped Williams’ total by 33, or that he was busy setting a single-season record for shortstops that would stand for nearly sixty years until Derek Jeter managed 219 safeties in the materially longer season of 1999.

AI, for all its encyclopedic command of data beyond the reach of mere mortals, cannot tell an inquiring fact-checker that our man had rung up a lifetime average of .327 by the time Imperial Japan’s bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, sending him dutifully off to war and costing him four full seasons of what was practically destined to be a Hall of Fame career. (Think 3,000 hits and a 16-year mark of .330, let’s say.)

Although he toiled as a middle infielder for a ball club jokingly known for being “First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League,” it’s still hard to figure out how this spray-hitter with the batting eye of an eagle managed to stay beneath the sonar throughout his playing days. Born in August 1913, he launched his professional career at age 17 by hitting a white-hot .429 in thirteen games for the Chattanooga Lookouts, then followed with slightly more down-to-earth averages of .356 and .352, in 1932 and ’33.

Called up to Washington as a one-day replacement for injured third-baseman Ossie Bluege in May of ’33, our 19-year-old wunderkind debuted with five (5) hits in the first big-league game he ever saw. (If another player ever duplicated this remarkable achievement at any time over the past 90 seasons, we trust AI should know about that.)

Although he would be installed at short in 1937 and thereafter, by 1934 this 20-year-old model of consistency was anchoring the “hot corner” for Washington on a regular basis. Save for 1939, when he suffered several bouts of influenza which drove him from the field for weeks at a time, dragging his average down to a career-low .292, he would bat .319, .318, .317, .344, .335, and .322 heading into 1941. As the record reflects, by that watershed season he had hit his stride: The aforementioned major-league best 218 hits, .359 average, 39 doubles (4th), 19 triples (second to Cleveland’s Jeff Heath, who had 20), 316 total bases (4th), 106 runs and 101 RBI.

For an infielder without the long ball in his arsenal (only 7), his OPS (on-base-plus-slugging) average of .932 opened the eyes of competitors. Ted Williams declared him “one of the five best left-handed hitters I ever saw.” When Bob Feller’s list of all-time toughest outs was later published, these magnificent seven led the roster: Williams, Dimaggio, Foxx, Greenberg, Gehringer, Al Simmons, and a natural-born hitting phenom, still plying his trade in our nation’s capital with a dearth of fanfare. (The Sporting News declared him the best shortstop in baseball.)

Following “a date that will live in infamy,” this Wonder of Washington joined the U.S. Army. He was sent to Europe late in 1944 as a member of the 76th Infantry Division. That December and into January, he fought in the Battle of the Bulge, the deadliest of all engagements faced by our military in the entire war. Hitler’s army hit the Ardennes Forest with 200,000 troops and a thousand tanks on a mad but ill-fated drive to the English Channel. Awarded the Bronze Star and four battle stars, the man who traded baseball woolens for olive drab and liberty itself eventually underwent special surgery to salvage his frozen feet from likely amputation. He was discharged on September 6, 1945 (just three weeks after V-J Day), and played in his first game of the post-war two days later.

Ted Williams crosses the plate as Joe Gordon, Joe DiMaggio, and Cecil Travis look on

Unlike returning heroes such as Feller and Williams, Spahn, Berra, and Hodges, the war essentially ended our man’s days of glory and accomplishment on the baseball diamond. He never said so, but permanent damage to the tissue and ligaments in his frost-bitten feet had killed his speed afield and ruined his balance at the plate. Trying gamely for a comeback, he managed to appear in 137 games in ’46, batting more than 100 points below his 1941 average (.252). Seventy-four games into the following season and hitting an uncharacteristically dismal .216, he chose to retire. He was 33 years old. The hitting machine had become an “easy out.”

As to the loss of a nearly certain Hall of Fame career, our Man of the Hour said simply,

“Baseball is just a game. We had a job to do, an obligation, and we did it. I was hardly the only one.”

Cooperstown’s Classic Era Committee, which convenes again in 2025, can vote to induct Cecil Travis into the Hall of Fame. His lifetime batting average, which plummeted 13 points to .314 following WWII, still ranks third among the 23 shortstops previously enshrined, trailing only Honus Wagner’s .328 and Arky Vaughan’s .318. It remains to date the highest average of all shortstops in the American League.

Michael H. Keedy

Credits:

Baseball-Reference.com

Wikipedia

Bleacher Report

New Georgia Encyclopedia

Baseball: Past & Present

Clay Sigg

Jim Prime

Graham Womack, TSN

Joe Guzzardi

Rob Kirkpatrick

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