Jack Corbett

John J. Corbett

• Bats unknown, Throws Right

• Born August 2, 1887 in Anderson, IN USA
• Died December, 1973

BR Minors page

Biographical Information

Jack Corbett played in the minor leagues from 1887 to 1897, mainly as a second baseman. He was later a minor league manager for a number of teams, invented what is still the standard base used throughout baseball, and as a minor league owner launched a significant legal case that tried to undermine baseball's antitrust exemption.

In 1915 and 1916, he was the manager of the Asheville Tourists of the North Carolina State League. During those two years, he was a boarder in a house in Asheville, NC operated by Julia Wolfe, mother of young Thomas Wolfe, who served as a batboy for the team and would later grow up to be one the greatest American novelists of the 20th century. A number of his books, most notably his masterpiece You Can't Go Home Again (published posthumously in 1940), feature a ballplayer named Nebraska Crane, whom scholars claim are based on Corbett.

While managing the Tourists, he was involved in the quickest game on record in professional baseball history on August 30, 1916. Asheville and Winston-Salem played the game that day at breakneck speed to allow Winston-Salem to catch an early train home, and the game concluded in 31 minutes only.

After World War I, Corbett moved to California. While his career as a manager came to an end, he made another significant contribution to baseball, inventing a new style of base with a tapered lip on the bottom to grip the infield dirt and a six-inch anchoring stanchion. That type of base, known as the "Jack Corbett Hollywood Base Sets", was adopted by the Major Leagues in 1939 and are still used to this day.

He turned up again in the 1950s as the owner of the El Paso Texans in various minor leagues. In that capacity, he sued Commissioner Happy Chandler, who had prevented him from signing players banned by organized baseball for jumping their contracts to play in the Mexican League and sought the overturning of baseball's antitrust exemption, granted by the United States Supreme Court in the Federal Baseball Club v. National League case of 1922. The case proceeded in tandem with that of minor league player Walter Kowalski, who was seeking $150,000 in damages from his former organization, the Brooklyn Dodgers, and were led by the same attorney, Frederic Johnson. The United States Court of Appeals dismissed the two cases on February 20, 1953 by reaffirming the Supreme Court's ruling that baseball is a sport, not a business, and thus exempt from antitrust laws.

Year-by-Year Managerial Record

Year	Team	League	Record	Finish	Playoffs	Notes
1903	Creston Cyclones	Southwest Iowa League	24-19	NA		Team joined for second half June 29
1905	Wausau Lumberjacks	Wisconsin State League		--	--	replaced by John Mott
1907	Ottumwa Packers	Iowa State League	51-74	7th
1909	Monmouth Browns	Illinois-Missouri League	77-50	1st
1910	Beardstown Infants	Illinois-Missouri League		--	--	replaced by Pants Rowland
1911	Lincoln Abes	Illinois-Missouri League		5th		replaced Charles Vaught
1912	Monmouth Browns	Central Association		--	--	replaced Bert Hough, replaced by R.L. Noven
1914	Asheville Mountaineers	North Carolina State League		6th		replaced Louis Cook
1915	Asheville Mountaineers	North Carolina State League		--	--	replaced by Louis Cook
1916	Asheville Tourists	North Carolina State League	58-54	4th
1917	Columbia Comers	South Atlantic League	40-28	2nd	League Champs

Further Reading

• Wynn Montgomery: "Quicker than Quick", The Baseball Research Journal, SABR, Volume 40, Number 2 (Fall 2011), pp. 104-106.
• Charles Norman: "The Book About Jack Corbett and a Lot of Other Stuff", Reverb Raccoon, October 31, 2022. [1]