Bernard "Barney" Gilligan, Catcher

This weak-hitting catcher from Cambridge, Massachusetts came into the league in 1879 with Cleveland, and joined the Grays in 1881.  At 5'6" and 130 pounds, he was the smallest man on the 1884 Grays.  1884 was undoubtedly his best year at the plate, as he set career highs in just about every category.  Although his batting average was only .245, he walked frequently, and his on-base average was just behind Hines and Start as third-best on the team.  He also was an offensive hero in the Series-clinching game, driving in Jack Farrell with a double for the winning run. 

However, his contribution to the team was more defensive than offensive.  In the nineteenth century, catching was an even more specialized art than it is today.  On the 1884 Grays, Gilligan caught Hoss Radbourn almost exclusively, resting on the days when Sweeney pitched.  He received partial credit in the press for each of Radbourn's 59 victories, and the two of them were thought of as a pair.  A typical Journal article praised Radbourn's "support from his plucky little back, Gilligan", and berated the opposing catcher for "failing to handle the sphere as neatly and as readily as Bernard G."  Catching Radbourn was no easy task, and probably required some instinctive knowledge of psychology.  On July 14, Radbourn lost his composure and started throwing intentional wild pitches, ignoring Gilligan's signs, and "seemingly striving to break up the little fellow", for which he was suspended from the team.  When Radbourn returned, the poor "little fellow" continued catching him, and helped guide him to one of the best seasons ever by a pitcher.  On September 2, both him and Radbourn received gold-framed crayon portraits of themselves as the league's "king battery."  An unidentified newspaper suggested that Gilligan's gift was "an expression of sympathy for so long putting up with Radbourn's arrogance and eccentricities."  Radbourn, by the way, had a .687 winning percentage in his five years with Gilligan, and a .529 percentage for the rest of his career.

Even today, a strikeout is recorded as a putout for the catcher.  In 1884, this meant something.  Batters regularly took first base when a catcher dropped the third strike.  With Hoss recording 441 strikeouts on the year, Gilligan was kept busy on this count.  On August 27, with men on first and second, he intentionally dropped the third strike, and fired the ball over to Denny in an attempted force double play; this brilliant strategy failed when Denny threw the ball over Joe Start's head for what would have been the second out.

Gilligan was not flawless himself.  Though he excelled at his main task (catching fastballs with only the slight protection of fingerless gloves), he was sometimes criticized for his throwing arm.  On August 8, he had great difficulty catching the ball, and got permission from the umpire to leave the game; Philadelphia protested the game, as he had "no visible injury."  On September 3, he injured a finger with one batter left, and third baseman Jerry Denny had to "don the stomach pad and gloves, while Bernard covered the third bag."  On September 20, with his hands battered from a season of abuse and the pennant already in the bag, the Journal noted that "Gilligan caught very poorly."  Catching in the 1880s was a rough job.

Gilligan stuck with Providence for 1885, and then played out the rest of his career in Washington and Detroit, disappearing after the 1888 season.  He died of blood poisoning at his home in Lynn, Massachusetts in 1934.

copyright Rick Stattler 2002

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