Mears, Charles Willard, 1874-1942

Epithet: of Offley

Charles Willard Mears was born in Monroeville, Ohio on June 23, 1874. He attended school in Norwalk and moved to Cleveland with his family in 1885. Mears was a confirmed baseball fan in his teens and tried to improve his access to ball games by serving as a stringer for The Sporting News. Another athletic passion was bicycling and Mears became the first chief counsel of the Ohio Division of the League of American Wheelmen and then editor of the Cycling Gazette. At the turn of the century, Mears turned from bicycles to automobiles and wrote for the Motor Vehicle Review. He moved on to establish the Daily Legal News, the newspaper of record for Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Mears was named sports editor of the Cleveland Press in 1902. He held the post for less than two years, but during this brief span, Mears began collecting baseball material.

In addition to his news writing, Mears also authored one book on the national pastime, Here's Something New, High Spots in Baseball: Best and Worst Fielding Records in All Major Leagues from 1871-1918 Inclusive, published in 1919. This is a compendium of fielding statistics from 1871 to 1918. In addition to figures on putouts, assists, and error, Mears also includes leaders in total chances per game. This last computation is roughly equivalent to "range factor," a much beloved measure to sabermetricians. In 1924, Mears published a daily column during the baseball season spotlighting a historical event, a forerunner of This Day in Baseball History . Mears covered the World Series for several years as a syndicated reporter. His articles for the News were based on his extensive knowledge of baseball statistics and history, and Mears himself was referred to as "Old Doc Statistics." News items from December 12, 1923 indicated that Mears had compiled complete baseball averages for players from 1877 to 1923. He accumulated over 250,000 box scores.

His son Emerson Mears stated that his father had purchased the largest part of his collection for "eight or nine thousand dollars" from an unknown collector. Mears himself indicated in 1939 that he had bought the Tim Murnane library and that of William M. Rankin, baseball editor of the New York Clipper. In declining health following an operation and wishing to move to a smaller home, Mears spent the last seven years of his life attempting to sell his collection. He died on December 9, 1942 and was buried in Lake View Cementary. In 1968 he was named to the national Advertising Hall of Fame.