"Hooper: Baseball and Capitola"
By Bob Levy
In 1971 writer Bob Levy sat down to talk with Harry Hooper just after his election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The resulting article (below) provides a glimpse into Harry Hooper the person, on and off the baseball field.
The large, broad-shouldered frame is only slightly bent with the weight of 83 years. The expensively-located house has the clean but cluttered look of a man living alone. Prominent among the clutter are issues of the “Sporting News,” and a copy of the huge “Baseball Encyclopedia,” published just over a year ago. The man, Harry Hooper, and his home still reflect a life which he left some 45 years ago, when he retired as a major league baseball player. That reflection took on a new brightness last week when Hooper was elected—at long last—to baseball’s Hall of Fame.
Harry Hooper is tied up with the history of Capitola as well as with the history of baseball. He was, for example, the postmaster of Capitola for years and took an active role in the area’s civic affairs before Capitola was incorporated. More recently, it was Hooper, a graduate civil engineer, who came up with the idea of building a groin at the [east] end of Capitola Beach to hold the sand that had been restored to the beach.
Harry Hooper is quite willing to talk about his associations with Capitola. To get him to talk about his associations with major league baseball is a bit trickier. For one thing, he says, “I hate to talk about myself. When I do, I find it’s always in the third person.” And quite unconsciously, it seemed, a few minutes later he commented, “There wasn’t an outfielder ever who could cover the ground that Harry Hooper could.”
Hooper was clearly torn between a most human desire to talk about why he, indeed, deserved to be in the Hall of Fame, and his natural reluctance to discuss himself. “I was too modest,” he admitted, “and that’s the worst thing in the world for someone in the public eye.”
There was an earlier effort, in 1950, to get Hooper into the Hall of Fame, he said. It was made by one of his teachers at St. Mary’s, but was unsuccessful. “My batting average wasn’t high enough,” Hooper said. This is a man who had a lifetime batting average of .281, accomplished with a total of 2,466 hits. His best years were with the Chicago White Sox, in 1921, when he hit .327, and 1924, when he batted .328.
It’s to his fielding, however, that Hooper looks with the most pride. “I’m the only man who ever had a sliding catch,” he said, amplifying that no outfield ever covered more ground. “I’d land on my hip and be ready to come up on my feet. I’d make a bit splash when I did it on a wet field, but the sliding catch just became a natural with me.”
He recalled the almost unbelievable catch New York Mets rightfielder Ron Swoboda made in the 1969 World Series. To make that catch, Swoboda had to leave his feet and dive headlong toward centerfield to grab the ball and prevent several runs from scoring.
“I made a catch as good as that once in a World Series (he played on four of them with the Boston Red Sox),” Hooper said. “Except that because of my slide, I didn’t have to leave the ground; so even if I hadn’t caught it, the ball would never have gotten by me, as it would have Swoboda if he’d missed.”
Hooper’s broad view of the evolution of baseball include the thought that the game underwent its most profound change in the 1919 and 1920 seasons. Why? “Because in 1919 they put (Babe) Ruth into the outfield, and he hit 29 home runs to break the existing record of 28 at the time. Then—most foolish thing—Boston traded him to New York and the game became ‘Home Run,’ not baseball.”
It was in 1920, Hooper asserts, that the rules were changed—such as the spitball being outlawed and fences being allowed to be brought in—to accommodate the hitters. It is to these factors that Hooper attributes his greater success as a hitter with Chicago during the last five years of his career than with Boston during the first 12 years.
Hooper joined the White Sox in 1921, the season after the “Black Sox” scandal had broken. He has a theory on that one, too. “That old skinflint Comiskey (owner of the White Sox at the time), he was responsible for that scandal. He wouldn’t pay his players, so when they had a chance to get some more money, some of them took it.”
Harry Hooper, born on a hilltop in southeastern Santa Clara County, didn’t really discover baseball until he was 10 years old. At that age, he went to Pennsylvania to spend time with relatives there in Lock Haven. “They had a baseball team (this was 1897)—a little minor league team, you know, and I’d go as often as I could. I used to embarrass my relatives because I hollered so much. That’s where I first got my love for baseball. I became a rabid fan.”
He came back the same year to the San Luis Valley, near Pacheco Pass, and introduced the other boys at his small school—to which he rode on horseback six miles every day—to the game of baseball. “Oh, we’d start a game, and usually, it would end up in a row,” Hooper recalled. He also remembers that he developed his arm in those early years by tossing rocks at rabbits. “I got quite a few, too,” he said.
Asked at what high school he began to sharpen his baseball skills, Hooper matter-of-factly said, “I never did go to high school.” Instead he hopped right into St. Mary’s College, where he embarked on a difficult five-year engineering course and played baseball, too.
He emerged (at age 20) as a civil engineer, and started looking for a job. While he was looking he played ball for a team in Alameda, from which he experienced being sold for the first time—to a team in Sacramento. The sale price for his talents was $25, of which he got half.
The first job he was able to land was as a railroad rodman in Sacramento, where he worked for the railroad during the week and played baseball on the weekends. “Until 1908 (about a year after he was out of college), I never gave a thought to playing professional ball,” Hooper said. But the owner of his Sacramento team was also the Boston Red Sox scout in the area and Hooper was signed to a Boston contract for $2,800 for the 1909 season. “I resigned my job with the railroad,” he said, “and I’ve often thought it was a good thing I did. The fellow who took my job drowned while working on the American River during a flood.”
After the 1912 season, Hooper married Esther Henchy of 41st Avenue, just a baseball’s throw from the Stockton Avenue home his family had moved to in 1906. Hooper and his wife soon moved into a home at 106 Cliff Street, Capitola, and lived there until 1962, when they moved to the Opal Cliff Drive house.
Esther Hooper died a couple years ago, and Hooper told an acquaintance who had telephoned to congratulate him on the Hall of Fame election: "My main gripe is that it didn’t come when Esther was still here. She was so much part of it.”
Congratulations, Hooper noted, are coming in much faster than he can handle. “I’ll never catch up with them. For every dozen I answer, two dozen come in.”
And will he be at Cooperstown, N.Y. next summer for his formal induction in to the Hall of Fame? “You bet I will. And my whole family will probably be there with me too.” That family includes his three children, Harry Jr. of Opal Cliffs, John of Houston, and Mrs. Marie Strain of Burlingame.
By Bob Levy
In 1971 writer Bob Levy sat down to talk with Harry Hooper just after his election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The resulting article (below) provides a glimpse into Harry Hooper the person, on and off the baseball field.
The large, broad-shouldered frame is only slightly bent with the weight of 83 years. The expensively-located house has the clean but cluttered look of a man living alone. Prominent among the clutter are issues of the “Sporting News,” and a copy of the huge “Baseball Encyclopedia,” published just over a year ago. The man, Harry Hooper, and his home still reflect a life which he left some 45 years ago, when he retired as a major league baseball player. That reflection took on a new brightness last week when Hooper was elected—at long last—to baseball’s Hall of Fame.
Harry Hooper is tied up with the history of Capitola as well as with the history of baseball. He was, for example, the postmaster of Capitola for years and took an active role in the area’s civic affairs before Capitola was incorporated. More recently, it was Hooper, a graduate civil engineer, who came up with the idea of building a groin at the [east] end of Capitola Beach to hold the sand that had been restored to the beach.
Harry Hooper is quite willing to talk about his associations with Capitola. To get him to talk about his associations with major league baseball is a bit trickier. For one thing, he says, “I hate to talk about myself. When I do, I find it’s always in the third person.” And quite unconsciously, it seemed, a few minutes later he commented, “There wasn’t an outfielder ever who could cover the ground that Harry Hooper could.”
Hooper was clearly torn between a most human desire to talk about why he, indeed, deserved to be in the Hall of Fame, and his natural reluctance to discuss himself. “I was too modest,” he admitted, “and that’s the worst thing in the world for someone in the public eye.”
There was an earlier effort, in 1950, to get Hooper into the Hall of Fame, he said. It was made by one of his teachers at St. Mary’s, but was unsuccessful. “My batting average wasn’t high enough,” Hooper said. This is a man who had a lifetime batting average of .281, accomplished with a total of 2,466 hits. His best years were with the Chicago White Sox, in 1921, when he hit .327, and 1924, when he batted .328.
It’s to his fielding, however, that Hooper looks with the most pride. “I’m the only man who ever had a sliding catch,” he said, amplifying that no outfield ever covered more ground. “I’d land on my hip and be ready to come up on my feet. I’d make a bit splash when I did it on a wet field, but the sliding catch just became a natural with me.”
He recalled the almost unbelievable catch New York Mets rightfielder Ron Swoboda made in the 1969 World Series. To make that catch, Swoboda had to leave his feet and dive headlong toward centerfield to grab the ball and prevent several runs from scoring.
“I made a catch as good as that once in a World Series (he played on four of them with the Boston Red Sox),” Hooper said. “Except that because of my slide, I didn’t have to leave the ground; so even if I hadn’t caught it, the ball would never have gotten by me, as it would have Swoboda if he’d missed.”
Hooper’s broad view of the evolution of baseball include the thought that the game underwent its most profound change in the 1919 and 1920 seasons. Why? “Because in 1919 they put (Babe) Ruth into the outfield, and he hit 29 home runs to break the existing record of 28 at the time. Then—most foolish thing—Boston traded him to New York and the game became ‘Home Run,’ not baseball.”
It was in 1920, Hooper asserts, that the rules were changed—such as the spitball being outlawed and fences being allowed to be brought in—to accommodate the hitters. It is to these factors that Hooper attributes his greater success as a hitter with Chicago during the last five years of his career than with Boston during the first 12 years.
Hooper joined the White Sox in 1921, the season after the “Black Sox” scandal had broken. He has a theory on that one, too. “That old skinflint Comiskey (owner of the White Sox at the time), he was responsible for that scandal. He wouldn’t pay his players, so when they had a chance to get some more money, some of them took it.”
Harry Hooper, born on a hilltop in southeastern Santa Clara County, didn’t really discover baseball until he was 10 years old. At that age, he went to Pennsylvania to spend time with relatives there in Lock Haven. “They had a baseball team (this was 1897)—a little minor league team, you know, and I’d go as often as I could. I used to embarrass my relatives because I hollered so much. That’s where I first got my love for baseball. I became a rabid fan.”
He came back the same year to the San Luis Valley, near Pacheco Pass, and introduced the other boys at his small school—to which he rode on horseback six miles every day—to the game of baseball. “Oh, we’d start a game, and usually, it would end up in a row,” Hooper recalled. He also remembers that he developed his arm in those early years by tossing rocks at rabbits. “I got quite a few, too,” he said.
Asked at what high school he began to sharpen his baseball skills, Hooper matter-of-factly said, “I never did go to high school.” Instead he hopped right into St. Mary’s College, where he embarked on a difficult five-year engineering course and played baseball, too.
He emerged (at age 20) as a civil engineer, and started looking for a job. While he was looking he played ball for a team in Alameda, from which he experienced being sold for the first time—to a team in Sacramento. The sale price for his talents was $25, of which he got half.
The first job he was able to land was as a railroad rodman in Sacramento, where he worked for the railroad during the week and played baseball on the weekends. “Until 1908 (about a year after he was out of college), I never gave a thought to playing professional ball,” Hooper said. But the owner of his Sacramento team was also the Boston Red Sox scout in the area and Hooper was signed to a Boston contract for $2,800 for the 1909 season. “I resigned my job with the railroad,” he said, “and I’ve often thought it was a good thing I did. The fellow who took my job drowned while working on the American River during a flood.”
After the 1912 season, Hooper married Esther Henchy of 41st Avenue, just a baseball’s throw from the Stockton Avenue home his family had moved to in 1906. Hooper and his wife soon moved into a home at 106 Cliff Street, Capitola, and lived there until 1962, when they moved to the Opal Cliff Drive house.
Esther Hooper died a couple years ago, and Hooper told an acquaintance who had telephoned to congratulate him on the Hall of Fame election: "My main gripe is that it didn’t come when Esther was still here. She was so much part of it.”
Congratulations, Hooper noted, are coming in much faster than he can handle. “I’ll never catch up with them. For every dozen I answer, two dozen come in.”
And will he be at Cooperstown, N.Y. next summer for his formal induction in to the Hall of Fame? “You bet I will. And my whole family will probably be there with me too.” That family includes his three children, Harry Jr. of Opal Cliffs, John of Houston, and Mrs. Marie Strain of Burlingame.