Bill Leinhauser

William Charles Leinhauser

• Bats Right, Throws Right
• Height 5' 10", Weight 150 lb.

• Debut May 18, 1912
• Final Game May 18, 1912
• Born November 4, 1893 in Philadelphia, PA USA
• Died April 14, 1978 in Elkins Park, PA USA

BR page

Biographical Information

Bill Leinhauser played one major league game, as a replacement player.

On May 18, 1912, the Detroit Tigers players protested Ty Cobb's suspension and voted to strike. Faced with a $5,000 fine for failing to field a team, club owner Frank Navin ordered manager Hughie Jennings to sign up some local amateurs. Leinhauser, Allan Travers, Dan McGarvey, Billy Maharg, Jim McGarr, Vincent Maney, Jack Coffey, Hap Ward and Ed Irvin put on Tiger uniforms. Two Detroit coaches, Joe Sugden, 41, and Deacon McGuire, 48, completed the lineup, and scored the only two runs for Detroit. The Philadelphia Athletics won 24–2, as Travers went all the way, giving up 26 hits and 24 runs in eight innings. The only recruit to hit for Detroit was Irvin.

Like many of his teammates that day, Leinhauser was an amateur ballplayer of no particular distinction in Philadelphia, PA when he was rounded up by the Tigers brass to have enough men to field a team. Many of them, like Bill, were just hanging around a local gym. The Tigers did not expect to actually have to play a game with those players, so they did not attempt to find the best players available - just enough to show that they had made an effort. However, they were not allowed to forfeit or postpone the game by the American League, so the amateurs had to play, with predictable results. In the game, Bill went 0 for 4 with 3 strikeouts and recorded an assist in centerfield. At 18, he was the youngest of the group, but because he was the centerfielder, he got wear Cobb's uniform.

His one-day baseball career over, and his days as a noted amateur welterweight boxer coming to an end, he became a policeman. He served in France for the U. S. Army during World War I (BN). He retired as captain of the North Central Detective Division of the Philadelphia Police Department in 1959 after 41 years, 29 in the narcotics squad. He died at age 84 at Rolling Hill Hospital in Elkins Park, PA and is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon, PA.

Sources

Principal sources for Bill Leinhauser include newspaper obituaries (OB), government records (VA,CM,CW), Sporting Life (SL), Baseball Digest, The Sporting News (TSN), The Sports Encyclopedia:Baseball 2006 by David Neft & Richard Cohen (N&C), old Who's Who in Baseballs (none) (WW), old Baseball Registers (none) (BR), TSN's Daguerreotypes (none) (DAG), The Historical Register, The Baseball Necrology by Bill Lee (BN), Pat Doyle's Professional Ballplayer DataBase(PD), The Baseball Library (BL); various Encyclopediae including The Official Encyclopedia of Baseball by Turkin & Thompson (T&T), MacMillan Baseball Encyclopedia (Mac), Total Baseball (TB), The Bill James Historical Abstract (BJ) and The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball (LJ); Retrosheet (RS), The Baseball Chronology (BC), Baseball Page (BP), The Baseball Almanac (BA), Baseball Cube (B3) and obituaries at deadballera.com (DBE) as well as research by Reed Howard (RH), Pat Doyle (PD) and Frank Hamilton (FH).

Further Reading

• Kevin W. Barwin: "Paper Tigers: How a Player Strike Put a Team of 'Misfits' on a Major League Field for a Day", Baseball Research Journal, SABR, Vol. 52 Number 1 (Spring 2023), pp. 5-13.