June 18 Happy Birthday to Former Tigers or Detroit Wolverines

Charlie Ganzel was on the 1887 Champion Detroit team.  He was born in Wisconsin during the Civil War and started in pro ball in 1884 with the St. Paul Apostles in the Northwestern League.  He stayed with the team when they left the collapsing Northwestern League and joined Union Association and changed their name to the White Caps for the rest of the 1884 season.  He left the turmoil that was the Union Association and joined the Philadelphia Quakers of the National League in 1885.  He was a catcher by trade but also played a little outfield.  He was not very successful in Philly hitting only .164 and partway through the 1886 season he left Philly for National League Detroit Wolverines.   The 1886 Wolverines finished second in the league led by a great catcher, Charlie Bennett.  If you recall the names of Tiger Stadium you may recall that going backwards it was called Tiger Stadium, Briggs Stadium for owner Walter Briggs, Navin Field for owner Frank Navin and Bennett Park for fan favorite Charlie Bennett.  Today there are no parks in the majors named for a fan favorite player.  While Charlie Bennett was a much better defensive catcher than Charlie Ganzel, Ganzel outhit Bennett .272 to .243.  But Ganzel had a penchant for K’s in his early career and could not walk to save his life.  He had a typical 7 walks to 22 K’s in 1886 to raise his OBP from the .272 batting average to only .295 OBP.  On the other hand Bennett was patient at the plate and walked 48 times to 29 K’s for a .371 OBP.  But something happened to Ganzel in 1887.  He hit .260 but his K’s dropped significantly to 2!  He only walked 8 times but his drop in K’s allowed him to be the Wolverines main catcher for the 1887 season.  Ganzel caught 51 games to Bennett’s 45.  Bennett was still the much better defensive catcher and matched or beat Ganzel in every other major hitting stat.  The same pattern applied to the World Series where the Wolverines beat the St. Louis Browns 10 games to 5.  That would be the only time the Wolverines won the World Series and the only time that Ganzel was the starter ahead of Bennett.  Bennett was again firmly in place behind the plate in 1888 and Ganzel started trying other positions and actually played more games at second than catching and also played a bit of third and short.  The 1888 Wolverines dropped to 5^th in the National League and at the end of the season the Wolverines sold their best players, Hall of Famer Dan Brouthers, Hardy Richardson, Deacon White and catchers Bennett and Ganzel to the Boston Beaneaters for the outrageous sum of $30,000.  In 1889 Bennett was the Beaneaters catcher and Ganzel was the number one utility player for the Beaneaters.  It largely stayed this way (with a brief exception when King Kelly took the starting duties briefly in 1892.) until in 1894 Bennett lost his legs in a train accident.  At that time Ganzell took over until the last two years of his career in 1896 and 1897.  He was done after 1897 and the following year his brother John started his time in the majors.  Charlie’s final stats were a .259 batting average as a career and a nearly identical .258 average during his three years in Detroit.  Charlie Ganzel had two sons that played in the minors and a third son, Foster Pirie “Babe” Ganzel, played in the majors in 1927 and 1928.  But Charlie never saw that as he had died 13 years earlier.  The 43 year gap between the two starting dates between father and son is still the largest gap for any father and son combo in the majors.