page_title: Elmer Flick
section_title: Major League Baseball
hierarchical_section_title: Elmer Flick / Professional career / Major League Baseball
caption_attribution_description: Elmer Flick (1876 - 1971), an American baseball player
context_page_description: Elmer Harrison Flick was an American professional baseball outfielder who played in Major League Baseball from 1898 to 1910 for the Philadelphia Phillies, Philadelphia Athletics, and Cleveland Bronchos/Naps. In 1,483 career games Flick recorded a .313 batting average while accumulating 164 triples, 1,752 hits, 330 stolen bases, and 756 runs batted in. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1963.
  Flick began his career in semi-professional baseball and played in minor league baseball for two years. He was noticed by George Stallings, the manager of the Phillies, who signed Flick as a reserve outfielder. Flick was pressed into a starting role in 1898 when an injury forced another player to retire. He excelled as a starter. Flick jumped to the Athletics in 1902, but an court injunction prevented him from playing in Pennsylvania. He joined the Naps, where he continued to play for the remainder of his major league career, which was curtailed by a stomach ailment.
  Flick was known predominantly for his solid batting and speed. He led the National League in RBI in 1900, and led the American League in stolen bases in 1904 and 1906, and in batting average in 1905.
context_section_description: George Stallings, the manager of the Philadelphia Phillies of the National League (NL), noticed Flick while he played for Dayton. Stallings signed Flick to the Phillies to serve as a reserve outfielder for the team in the 1898 season. Starting outfielder Sam Thompson injured his back after six games, forcing Stallings to play Flick. In his debut game, Flick went 2-for-3 with two singles against Fred Klobedanz. Thompson returned to the team briefly, but reinjured his back and announced his retirement in May, allowing Flick to play regularly. Flick proved himself a capable big leaguer, batting .302 with eight home runs, 13 triples and 81 runs batted in (RBIs). In the 1899 season, he batted .342, with 98 runs scored and 98 RBIs. However, he suffered a serious knee injury in August, and reinjured the knee when he returned to the game too quickly.
  Before the 1900 season, Philadelphia stars Napoleon Lajoie and Ed Delahanty held out of renewing their contracts with the team. Other members of the team had grown disgruntled. Amid talk of a revival of the American Association, Flick and several other players began to talk about not returning to the team the next year. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Flick's father was in the chair business in Cleveland and that he might require Flick's help with the business. Flick agreed to a contract extension before the season started.
  That year, he led the NL with 110 RBIs. He finished second in the NL with a .367 batting average, a .545 slugging percentage, 11 home runs, 59 extra-base hits, and 297 total bases. He also engaged in a fistfight with Lajoie that caused Lajoie to miss five weeks due to a broken thumb. The race for the batting title came down to the end of the season. The title winner, Honus Wagner, later said, "I've had a lot of thrills, but don't think I was ever happier than in 1900 when I won after battling Elmer Flick to the last day of the season for the title."
  Flick was one of many star NL players who jumped to the fledgling American League (AL) after the 1901 season, playing for the crosstown Philadelphia Athletics. Flick played in 11 games for the Athletics, before the Phillies obtained an injunction from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court prohibiting any player under contract with the Phillies from playing for another team. Though this injunction named Lajoie, Bill Bernhard, and Chick Fraser only, it still applied to Flick as well. As a recourse, Flick and teammate Lajoie signed instead with the Cleveland Naps, as the Pennsylvania injunction could not be enforced in Ohio. The two players often traveled separately from their teammates for the next year, never setting foot in Pennsylvania in order to avoid a subpoena. Flick spent the remainder of his career in Cleveland, and the contract dispute was resolved when the leagues made peace in September 1903 with the National Agreement.
  On July 6, 1902, Flick hit three triples in one game. Between 1900 and 2010, 49 players accomplished that feat. By early 1904, Flick did not want to re-sign with Cleveland for the offered $2,500 ($71,139 in current dollar terms). Plans were being made to run a railroad through a corner of Flick's farm and Flick hoped to hire some of his horses to the construction team. "After July 4, my farm work will be along so that I will be able to give considerable attention to independent ball", he said.
  Flick did return to Cleveland for the 1904 season. That year, Flick tied teammate Harry Bay for the league lead with 38 stolen bases. Flick was the AL batting champion in the 1905 season with a .308 average. Only Carl Yastrzemski, who won the batting title with a .301 average in the 1968 season, led the league with a lower average. Flick also led the league with a .462 slugging percentage and 18 triples in 1905. His .383 on-base percentage trailed only Topsy Hartsel. During a 1905 game, Cleveland fielders were charged with seven errors in a single inning, but Flick committed only one of the errors.
  In the 1906 season, Flick played a league-leading 157 games. He led the league with 700 plate appearances
caption: Elmer Flick in 1910
exif: {}