Art Fletcher

September 25, 1929. Yankee Stadium sits in mourning, Miller Huggins is gone at 51, and somebody has to fill out a lineup card for that afternoon's game. The man who takes it is a 44-year-old third-base coach who spent thirteen big-league seasons as a player -- most of them picking fights as John McGraw's shortstop -- and four more losing as a National League manager. Art Fletcher didn't want the job. He'd have it anyway, for eleven games, and then he'd do something almost nobody in his position does -- he'd hand it back.

The Meanest Shortstop in New York

Arthur Fletcher was born January 5, 1885, in Collinsville, Illinois, and broke into the majors with McGraw's Giants in 1909, a 24-year-old backup who took two years to win the regular shortstop job and one season to make it his own. In 1911 he hit .319 with a .400 on-base percentage, scored 73 runs, and helped New York to the pennant -- the first of three straight, with a fourth to come in 1917. He anchored the left side of a Deadball Era infield that ran Fred Merkle at first, Larry Doyle at second, and Buck Herzog at third, and he did it with a temper that made McGraw look patient by comparison.

Fletcher fought opposing players. He fought umpires. He reportedly fought fans. Sportswriters of the era treated him as the Giants' designated aggressor, the guy who made road trips genuinely unpleasant for the other seven teams in the league (McGraw got the ink, but Fletcher did plenty of the actual damage). None of it made him popular outside the Polo Grounds. All of it made him exactly the shortstop McGraw wanted.

The postseason never cooperated. Fletcher played in four World Series with the Giants -- 1911, 1912, 1913, and 1917 -- and lost every single one, hitting a combined .191 across 25 games. Three of those losses came to Connie Mack's Athletics and the Red Sox; the fourth was a six-game defeat to the White Sox in 1917, the same club that would blow up two years later in the Black Sox scandal. Four pennants, zero rings. It's a specific kind of frustration, watching the sport's biggest stage turn you into someone you aren't.

On June 7, 1920, McGraw traded him. The Giants sent Fletcher, pitcher Wilbert Hubbell, and a reported $100,000 to the Phillies for shortstop Dave Bancroft, who'd just blown up at his own manager and demanded out of Philadelphia (a shortstop for a shortstop, plus cash -- baseball trades were simpler math back then). Bancroft went on to a Hall of Fame career in New York. Fletcher closed out his playing days in Philadelphia, retiring in 1922 with a career line of .277, 1,534 hits, 32 home runs, and 676 RBI over 1,533 games -- a good glove, a decent bat, and a reputation that outlasted both.

Four Years of Losing

The Phillies made him their manager for 1923, and it went about as badly as a job can go without getting a man fired mid-season. Fletcher's four years in Philadelphia produced four losing records: 50-104 in 1923, 55-96 in 1924, 68-85 in 1925 (a tie for sixth place, the club's best finish since 1918), and 58-93 in 1926. Combined: 231-378, a .379 winning percentage, bookended by last-place finishes. The Phillies simply didn't have the talent, and no amount of Fletcher's old McGraw-style fire could talk a bad roster into being a good one.

Miller Huggins hired him away from that wreckage in 1927, bringing Fletcher onto the Yankees' coaching staff for what turned into the best team anybody had ever assembled -- Murderers' Row, the 110-win juggernaut that swept the World Series that October and did it again in 1928. Fletcher settled in as the third-base coach, built a reputation for reading opposing signals better than almost anyone in the sport, and reportedly became the highest-paid coach in baseball, pulling down more than $10,000 a year by some accounts. The shortstop who couldn't win a World Series as a player was now coaching third for a team that couldn't stop winning them.

Eleven Games

Then came September 1929. Huggins checked into Saint Vincent's Hospital on September 20 with what looked like a manageable skin infection. Five days later he was dead, and the Yankees were suddenly a team without a manager in the middle of a pennant race they'd already lost (Philadelphia's Athletics had the AL locked up by 18 games, so at least the stakes were low -- small mercy, but a real one). Fletcher, the senior coach on the bench, took the job nobody wanted to talk about out loud.

He went 6-5 over the final 11 games. The Yankees finished 88-66, second place, the same position they'd have finished in no matter who held the lineup card. Fletcher wasn't managing for October. He was managing a clubhouse that had just watched a man they respected die in a hospital bed a few miles from the Stadium, and by that measure, 6-5 with your head straight is a job well done.

That was in September. In early October, owner Jacob Ruppert offered him the job permanently -- not the audition, the whole thing, manager of the New York Yankees going forward. Fletcher said no.

Turning Down the Best Job in Baseball

The reasons weren't complicated, even if they were hard to say out loud. Fletcher reportedly told his wife, "I just turned down the best job in baseball" -- a man fully aware of what he was walking away from, doing it anyway. By most contemporary accounts his own high-strung temperament worried him; a manager who fought that hard as a player and lost that often as a Phillies skipper knew what daily command of a major-league roster would cost him, and he wasn't sure he had it to give twice. Following Huggins made it worse. The man had built a dynasty from nothing, won six pennants, and died at 51 with the job apparently killing him by degrees. Whoever sat in that chair next would be measured against a ghost every single day.

Fletcher chose the dugout over the office. He reportedly turned down managing offers from Cleveland, the St. Louis Browns, the Chicago White Sox, and the Detroit Tigers over the years too (four different owners, presumably, hearing the same answer he gave Ruppert). Every time, Fletcher stayed put. Ruppert moved on to Bob Shawkey, a longtime Yankees pitcher who'd started the first game at the new Yankee Stadium back in 1923. Babe Ruth wanted the job too and didn't get it -- Ruppert wasn't ready to hand a roster and a payroll to the most undisciplined star in the sport, whatever he'd done with a bat. Shawkey lasted one season. Then came Joe McCarthy in 1931, and Fletcher coached third base for him too.

Nineteen Years at Third

Fletcher stayed with the organization through 1945 -- 19 seasons total, longer than almost anyone who ever coached third base in pinstripes. He was there for the back half of the Ruth era, the middle of Lou Gehrig's consecutive-games streak, and its ending too: Fletcher was the Yankees coach who told a young Babe Dahlgren he'd be starting at first base on May 2, 1939, the morning Gehrig voluntarily benched himself for good. He watched McCarthy build the next dynasty on Huggins' foundation, coaching third for nine championship teams between 1927 and 1943 -- more rings than most managers ever collect, all of them earned from the coach's box instead of the dugout chair he'd turned down.

A heart attack late in the 1945 season forced him to retire. Five years later, on February 6, 1950, a second one killed him in Los Angeles. He was 65.

Fletcher never got to be a Yankees manager, and by his own account, he never wanted to be. He'd already spent four years finding out what it felt like to lose as one in Philadelphia, and eleven games finding out what it felt like to hold together a grieving team that wasn't his to keep. He decided the view from third base suited him better. Nine championship rings later, it's hard to argue he got the math wrong.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who managed the Yankees after Miller Huggins died in 1929?

Art Fletcher, the Yankees' third-base coach since 1927, took over as interim manager for the final 11 games of the 1929 season after Huggins died on September 25. Fletcher went 6-5, and the Yankees finished 88-66, in second place. He declined the permanent job that October, and Bob Shawkey was hired instead for the 1930 season.

Why did Art Fletcher turn down the Yankees manager job in 1929?

Fletcher reportedly worried that his own high-strung temperament wasn't suited to the daily pressure of managing, and following a legend like Huggins -- who had just died at 51 with six pennants and three championships to his name -- added to the weight. He's said to have told his wife, "I just turned down the best job in baseball," fully aware of what he was passing up. He stayed on as a Yankees coach instead, later turning down managerial offers from several other clubs over the years.

What was Art Fletcher's career before he coached the Yankees?

Fletcher was John McGraw's regular shortstop for the New York Giants from 1911 to 1920, helping New York to four NL pennants (1911, 1912, 1913, 1917) -- though the Giants lost all four World Series. He finished his playing career with the Phillies in 1922, then managed Philadelphia for four losing seasons (1923-1926, 231-378) before joining the Yankees as a coach in 1927.

How many World Series did Art Fletcher win as a Yankees coach?

Fletcher coached third base for the Yankees from 1927 to 1945, a span that included 10 World Series appearances and 9 championships -- 1927, 1928, 1932, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939, 1941, and 1943. The lone loss came in 1942, to the St. Louis Cardinals.