page_title: Cap Anson
section_title: Retirement
hierarchical_section_title: Cap Anson / Retirement
caption_attribution_description: Cap Anson (1852 – 1922), professional baseball player
context_page_description: Adrian Constantine Anson, nicknamed "Cap" and "Pop", was an American Major League Baseball first baseman. Including his time in the National Association, he played a record 27 consecutive seasons. Anson was regarded as one of the greatest players of his era and one of the first superstars of the game. He spent most of his career with the Chicago Cubs franchise, serving as the club's manager, first baseman and, later in his tenure, minority owner. He led the team to six National League pennants in the 1880s. Anson was one of baseball's first great hitters, and probably the first to tally over 3,000 career hits.
  His contemporary influence and prestige are regarded by historians as playing a major role in establishing the racial segregation in professional baseball that persisted until the late 1940s. On several occasions, Anson refused to take the field when the opposing roster included black players. Anson may have influenced the most noted vote in 19th-century professional baseball in favor of segregation: a July 14, 1887 one by the high-minor International League to ban the signing of new contracts with black players.
context_section_description: Anson briefly made a return to baseball managing the New York Giants in June and July of 1898. He then attempted to buy a Chicago team in the Western League, but failed after being opposed by Spalding. In 1900, he helped to organize a new version of the defunct American Association, called the New American Base Ball Association, and was named its president. However, at the first sign of trouble he dissolved the league before a single game was played, drawing heated criticism from other backers.
  After a number of failed business attempts, including a handball arena and bottled ginger beer that exploded on store shelves, he was later elected city clerk of Chicago in 1905. After serving one term, he failed in the Democratic primary to become sheriff in 1907.
  In 1907, Anson made another attempt to come back to baseball, acquiring a semi-pro team in the Chicago City League, which he would call "Anson's Colts". Anson initially had no intention of playing for the team, but in June 1907, at the age of 55, Anson started playing some games at first base in an attempt to boost poor attendance. Despite the draw of seeing Anson play, the team did not attract much attendance, and lost money for Anson. In the fall of 1908, Anson assembled a semi-pro football team, also called Anson's Colts. Although the football team won the city championship, they were not a financial success.
  Anson's few successful ventures included a combination billiards hall and a bowling alley he opened in downtown Chicago in 1899. Anson was named vice-president of the American Bowling Congress in 1903, and led a team to the five-man national championship in 1904. Anson was forced to sell the billiards hall in 1909 when faced with mounting financial problems that led to his bankruptcy. Anson was also an avid golfer.
  Anson's 1900 book A Ball Player's Career: Being the Personal Reminiscences of Adrian C. Anson, was ghostwritten by Chicago horse racing writer and poet Richard Cary Jr., who had the pen name of Hyder Ali. Right after it was published, Cary told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "I really thought when I started that the ‘Cap’ [sic] would be able to reel off the story of his life about as fast as a nimble man would care to write it. It took me just two days to find that was not the case. A day and a half to get the ‘Cap’ to sit down and the other half day in egging him on.  The story had to be literally dragged out of him. The incidents of his baseball career were apparently fresh in his mind, but when it came to actual dates he was all at sea. When he did give a date nine times out of ten it was wrong and had to be corrected later on."  The New York Times said whether Anson "wrote every word in this volume of reminiscences or not[,] the book reads characteristically.  The expression is Ansonian."
  Anson began acting during his baseball career. In 1888, he made his stage debut with a single appearance in Hoyt's play A Parlor Match at the Theatre Comique in Harlem. He also played himself in an 1895 Broadway play called The Runaway Colt, written to take advantage of his fame. Later, Anson began touring on the vaudeville circuit, a common practice for athletes of the time, which lasted up until about a year before his death.
  He first appeared in vaudeville in 1913 doing a monologue and a short dance. In 1914, George M. Cohan wrote a monologue for him, and in 1917, Cohan, with Chicago Tribune sportswriter Ring Lardner wrote another piece for him, titled First Aid for Father. Anson appeared with two of his grown daughters, Adele and Dorothy, and would bat papier-mâché baseballs made by Albert Spalding into the audience. He appeared in 1921 accompanied by his two daughters in an act written by Ring Lardner with songs by Herman Timberg.
  Anson retired from vaudeville in 1921, and continued to refuse a pension from Major League Baseball, despite having no other income. In April 1922, he became the general manager of a new golf club in the South Side of Chicago.
caption: Anson in 1907
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