Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,931
By This is the grave of Pants Rowland.
Born in 1878 in Platteville, Wisconsin, Clarence Rowland loved baseball from the time he was a child. He earned the nickname “Pants” because he would play in his father’s overalls. He wasn’t actually very good at baseball though. He got to play some minor league ball, sure, but as a backup catcher. That meant almost exactly what it did today–can’t hit, good fielder, future manager. That’s Pants Rowland for you. He became the manager for the Dubuque Miners, a minor league club. He rose through the minor leagues until 1914. Then Charles Comiskey, the cheap bastard who owned the Chicago White Sox, offered him the job of managing his discontented but excellent players. No one knew who he was.
The thing was, Rowland was a pretty good manager. Of course it was the talent like Shoeless Joe Jackson that allowed the White Sox to be so good during these years, but Rowland pretty much took the side of the players in their endless battles with Comiskey. Rowland led them to the World Series title in 1917, at which point Comiskey fired him. Good for Rowland.
After that Rowland became an umpire in 1923 and worked AL games until 1927. I hope he tried to screw over Comiskey with his calls. Basically, Rowland would spend the rest of his life in the game, doing almost everything. He became a scout eventually, working with the Cubs in the late 30s, when he was told to acquire Dizzy Dean no matter the cost, one of the disastrous trades in baseball history to that point. Not his fault though, he was just doing what he was told.
Rowland then became a big Pacific Coast League guy, president of the Los Angeles Dodgers and defender of a league he felt really should be equal to the American and National League. Certainly the quality of the players meant he could have some sort of case here. He and Kenesaw Mountain Landis hated each other. Landis saw the PCL as a place for teams to get cheap players. Rowland saw the PCL as potential competition to the AL and NL. Landis probably saw it that way too and wanted to kill it. Of course Landis won this battle, particularly when the Dodgers and Giants picked up and left New York for California after World War II, ending that battle entirely. Landis also hated Rowland for managing the players who became the Black Sox a quarter century earlier. Landis was also an absolute scumbag, so let’s always remember that.
After his attempt to raise up the PCL failed, Rowland took a job as VP of the Chicago Cubs. He stayed with the club for his entire life, though of course at the end was more of an honorary guy. He died in 1969, at the age of 91.
Pants Rowland is buried in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, Alsip, Illinois.
If you would like this series to visit other World Series winning managers, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Billy Southworth is in Columbus, Ohio and Gabby Street is in Joplin, Missouri. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.