Robinson Cancel is back! Did you miss him? Did you realize he was gone? Did you know he had ever been there in the first place? Nine years ago, 23-year old Cancel made his big league debut with the Milwaukee Brewers. 13 stops later, he was back in the majors with the Mets on June 6. On Sunday, he hit a game-winning two-run pinch single that may well have saved manager Willie Randolph’s job. What’s that…? Oh…scratch that last part.
The question is: is a nine-year gap some kind of record? The answer? No, it is not. It’s not even close. Clay Davenport researched long gaps and discovered that there have been 699 players who were absent from the majors for at least five years. Of those, these are the 10-longest career gaps in major league history.
Years: Player – Year last played to year of return (age at time of return)
22: Paul Schreiber — 1923 to 1945 (42)
21: Charley O’Leary — 1913 to 1934 (51)
19: Gabby Street — 1912 to 1931 (48)
16: Harry O’Neill — 1923 to 1939 (42)
16: Clay Touchstone — 1929 to 1945 (42)
15: Fred Johnson — 1923 to 1938 (44)
15: Joe Cicero — 1930 to 1945 (34)
13: Jack McFetridge — 1890 to 1903 (33)
13: Ken Penner — 1916 to 1929 (33)
13: Ralph Winegarner — 1936 to 1949 (39)
Schreiber pitched in 10 games for Brooklyn at the ages of 19 and 20 and then made a wartime return with the Yankees in 1945, getting into two games. O’Leary played over 900 games with the Tigers and Cardinals before becoming a coach, most prominently with the dynastic Yankees of the ‘20s. He was coaching for the Browns in 1934 when he was called on to pinch hit and delivered a single. Fred Johnson played in 17 games on his comeback – and played again the next year. He has the longest gap followed by a 10-game comeback. Joe Cicero has a 12-game comeback.
Clay reports that four players who were away for 10 or more years played in over 100 games on their return. Roy Schalk was away for 12 years. Thanks to the war, he returned for two seasons as the White Sox second baseman in 1944-45. Schalk actually got some down-ballot MVP consideration in ’45. Merwin Jacobson (1916-26), Marty Krug (1912-22) and Don Lang (1938-48) all missed 10 years between appearances. For Krug and Lang, those were their only two seasons in the majors.
In all, 10 players have missed 12 years (including Minnie Minoso’s famous 1964 to 1976 gap), five missed 11 years and 18 missed 10 years. Cancel is one of 29 players to have missed nine years. All but three of the players who missed nine years or more made their returns in 1949 or before. Besides Cancel, Carlos Pulido (1994-2003) and Aaron Holbert (1996-2005) are the only other recent players with gaps that long.
Looking at gaps of five years or more, three-quarters of them happened before 1950. Only 33 happened in the 1970s and 1980s combined, the lowest ebb. There were 37 in the ‘90s and 32 so far in the 21st Century. Why are they making something of a comeback? As it once was, so it is again. Before World War II and immediately after it, there were plenty of places for a former major leaguer to play professionally. The minor leagues declined steadily until, by the 1970s, many teams only had five affiliates and some had as few as four. Looking at Cancel’s career, we find that he’s only played 200 games of Triple A baseball and that he’s made stops in both the Atlantic and United independent leagues. This was not a career path available to players in the ‘70s and ‘80s.
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