The Infinite Baseball Card Set

102. Beibu Rusu: The Babe In Japan

2012-01-26T20:37:00.000-08:00

When my buddy Charlie Vascellaro and I were taking the Babe Ruth Museum Traveling Exhibit around the country back in '02, one of the best things about the job was the personal stories people were constantly telling us about their own, or someone they knew, had with The Babe. Most of the stories culminated in getting the cherished autograph of the big man. I don't think anyone else in the history of the world signed their own name as much as The Babe. In a day and age where guys like Barry Bond will deliberately ignore young children politely asking for a signature (I witnessed it myself, it was an episode that still turns my stomach), the stories of The Babe delaying the departure of the Yankees' team bus on a humid summer afternoon because he couldn't bring himself to leave until every scrap of paper handed to him by little children and blushing adults had his signature on it. I often wondered what went through The Babe's mind as he signed ball after ball, had his meals interrupted by a request to sign a cocktail napkin or confronted a typical day's mail delivery that held countless requests for that most famous of autographs.

I think The Babe looked on it as his obligation to the people who made him famous, a small price to pay for the love, money and adulation he now received and that his childhood so tragically lacked. We've all seen the newsreel footage of him standing on a ledge in New York, tossing brand-new baseballs with his signature to hundreds of screaming fans in the street. He's laughing so hard at the joy his autograph gave the people below. After re-watching this footage once, I realized how many hours he must have sat in a room and signed ball after ball.

Earlier this week, as I was devouring Rob Fitts' new book "Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball Espionage & Assassination During the 1934 Tour of Japan", I read a great passage about how The Babe was relaxing one night in his suite at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo when there was a knock at the door. An old Japanese man in a kimono bowed and handed a ball to The Babe: "sign please". The old man didn't have a pen so The Babe went back into his suite and got his own which he used to sign the ball and returned it to the old man. The old man bowed in thanks and out from his kimono sleeve rolled another ball. "Sign please" said the old man and The Babe signed the second ball. The old man bowed again and out rolled a third ball: "sign please" and The Babe did again. As Ruth's wife and daughter watched laughing, The Babe and the old man repeated the same drill more than a dozen times until there were no more balls to sign and the old man bowed and left. As Fitts writes "the amused Ruth took it in stride."

So this week I just wanted to pay tribute to Babe Ruth and how something so simple and free as his signature could bring so much happiness to so many people, as well as introduce you to a really spectacular book, the aforementioned "Banzai Babe Ruth." I've written about the 1934 Tour of Japan in my stories on Moe Berg, Eiji Sawamura and Victor Starffin and Fitt's book brings them all together in a great tale of baseball, spying and murder. I haven't read a baseball book this good in a very long time I can't recommend it enough. Here is what Rob has to say about his new book:

Nearly 500,000 screaming fans lined the streets of Tokyo on November 2, 1934, to welcome Babe Ruth and his team of American all stars to Japan. The line of open limousines held one of the greatest baseball teams ever assembled. Joining the Bambino were future Hall of Famer members Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Earl Averill, Charlie Gehringer, Lefty Gomez, and Connie Mack as well as stars Lefty O’Doul, Bing Miller, and Earl Whitehill. Only one player didn’t seem to belong—a journeyman catcher with a .238 career batting average named Moe Berg. Berg would eventually become an operative for the OSS, the forerunner of the CIA, and many believe that this trip was his first mission as a spy.

As the motorcade paraded through Ginza rows of fans, often ten to twenty deep, crowded into the road to catch a glimpse of the Americans. The pressing crowd reduced the broad streets to narrow paths just wide enough for the limousines to pass. Confetti and streamers fluttered down from well-wishers leaning out of windows of the avenues’ multi-storied office buildings. Thousands waived Japanese and American flags and cheered wildly. Cries of “Banzai! Banzai, Babe Ruth!” echoed through the neighborhood. Reveling in the attention, the Bambino plucked flags from the crowd and stood in the back of the car waving a Japanese flag in his left hand and an American in his right. Finally, the crowd couldn’t contain itself and rushed into the street to be closer to the Babe. Downtown traffic stood still for hours as he shook hands with the multitude.

Ruth and his teammates stayed in Japan for a month, playing 18 exhibition games against Japanese opponents in 12 cities. But there was more at stake than sport. Japan and the United States were slipping towards war as the two nations vied for control over China and naval supremacy in the Pacific. Politicians on both sides of the Pacific hoped that the goodwill generated by the tour and the two nations’ shared love of the game could help heal their growing political differences. Many observers, therefore, considered the all stars’ joyous reception significant. The New York Times, for example, wrote: “The Babe’s big bulk today blotted out such unimportant things as international squabbles over oil and navies.” Connie Mack added that the tour was “one of the greatest peace measures in the history of nations.”
But the shared love for a sport would not be enough to overcome Japan’s growing nationalism. Just two miles to the northwest of the parade at the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in Ichigaya, a group known as the Young Officers was planning a coup d’etat against the government, an upheaval that would jeopardize the tour’s success and put the players’ lives at risk. In another section of Tokyo, the ultra-nationalist War Gods Society met at their dojo. Their actions would tarnish the tour with bloodshed.

Banzai Babe Ruth! is the story of the doomed attempt to reconcile the United States and Japan through the tour of Major League all stars in 1934. It will reveal how two groups of men from different cultures, temporarily united by their love for baseball, became tragically divided as their countries rushed towards war. It is a tale of international intrigue, espionage, attempted murder and, of course, baseball.

We shall see how Babe Ruth, the jovial demigod of baseball, brought the two nations together and forestalled talks of war, before becoming a symbol in Japan of American decadence, cursed by imperial troops charging to their certain deaths. We shall also see how a 17-year-old pitcher named Eiji Sawamura became a national hero by playing against the Americans in friendship but died in the South Pacific as their bitter enemy. We will follow Moe Berg’s forays into espionage; the Young Officers attempt to overthrow the Japanese government; the ultra-nationalist War Gods Society attempt to murder tour organizer Matsutaro Shoriki; and the birth of Japanese professional baseball. It will introduce the lesser-known tales of Victor Starffin, the Russian immigrant and player for Japan whose father was a convicted murderer; and Jimmy Horio, a Japanese-American who played for the All Nippon team in an effort to gain a Major League contract. The 1934 All American tour of Japan was more than just a series of exhibition baseball games. It was an event that changed lives and influenced Japanese-American relations, for better and worse, for decades.

Robert K. Fitts is the author of three books and a number of articles on Japanese baseball and baseball cards. A former historical archaeologist, Rob left academics to write about baseball in 2000. His articles have appeared in The National Pastime, Baseball Research Journal, Journal of American Culture, Tuff Stuff and on MLB.com. His first book, Remembering Japanese Baseball won the 2005 Society of American Baseball Research & The Sporting News Award for Best Baseball Research. His second book, Wally Yonamine: The Man who Changed Japanese Baseball tells the story of the "Jackie Robinson of Japan." Learn more about his projects at www.RobFitts.com

101. Nick Cullop: Tragedy and Triumph in Atlanta

2012-01-23T10:52:00.000-08:00

Anyone who's done their share of baseball research by culling through old newspapers knows how easy it is to get sidetracked by an interesting article totally unrelated to the thing you're looking for. Such was the case a while ago with the mysterious Farmer Dean. Just recently I was going through a 1925 Dallas sports page when I stumbled on an Associated Press article causing me to abandon what I was originally searching for and set my artistic sights on an obscure outfielder whose major league career totaled just 173 games spread over 5 mediocre seasons with 5 different teams.

Despite forging a mediocre career in the majors, Nick Cullop was the “Babe Ruth of the Minor Leagues” back in the 1920’s and 30’s. His 420 home runs is still the third best in the minors and for a while he held the RBI record as well with 1,857. Despite his early promise, Cullop’s life took several tragic turns on the way to the majors.

He broke into pro ball with the 1920 Madison Greys of the class D South Dakota League where his 18-12 pitching record and .341 average got him a quick promotion to the Minneapolis Millers. A bit out-classed in the American Association he managed only a 1-2 record by the time the season ended. The next spring Cullop was sent down a rung to the Western League where despite early praise in the newspapers including The Sporting News, he went 6-11 and batted a disappointing .229. The following season he played for the Des Moines Boosters and had a bit more success with his 13-16 record for a poor team, but his average improved to .295. Despite his billing as a pitcher, Cullop was traded to the Omaha Buffaloes and converted into an outfielder. Through everyday use his hitting improved in spades to the point of him smashing 40 homers in 1924.

The New York Yankees got wind of Omaha's window-breaking outfielder and bought his contract from the Buffaloes. With the Yankee outfield stocked with fellas such as Babe Ruth, Earle Combes and Bob Meusel, Nick was optioned to the minor leagues for another year of seasoning.

Cullop was sent to the Atlanta Crackers of the Southern Association where he became the teams' starting center fielder. By now the 25 year-old slugger was married with two boys and his family moved with him to Atlanta for the 1925 season where he rented a 3rd floor apartment in town. The Yankee-in-waiting made the best out of his Atlanta assignment and continued demonstrating his hitting prowess. By the time Independence Day weekend rolled around Cullop was leading the Southern Association with 21 homers and was one of the most popular players on the Crackers.

Cullup went into the holiday weekend riding a hot streak - on the Thursday before the 4th he smashed 2 round-trippers off New Orleans' Harry Kelley and the next day belted another off John Martina. The Pelicans were still in town for the next 2 days and Nick was chomping at the bit getting ready to feast on some more New Orleans pitching.

Saturday morning, July 4th, Cullop was up early and at Spiller Field warming up for the holiday double header. Throwing the ball around to loosen up, Nick was informed that his 4 year-old son Billy had somehow broken through the screen covering the family's window and fallen 3 stories to the street below. Cullop dashed out of the ballpark still in uniform and not taking the time to grab a cab or secure a ride, ran the whole way back to his apartment building.

By the time the exhausted center fielder arrived in front of his home, young Billy Cullop was dead. The lengthy fall had broken his neck and he had died instantly. Cullop collapsed on the sidewalk in grief.

Emotionally distraught, Cullop spent two long weeks mourning his boy and supporting his frail wife and other son. The stress took its toll on the burly ballplayer and he lost over 14 pounds. When he finally became stable enough to suit up, Cullop dedicated the rest of his season to his boy Billy and finished up 1925 with a league-leading 30 home runs. Despite the tragic turn the year in Atlanta took, Nick had successfully battled back from adversity and proved to the Yankees that he had what it took to play in the big leagues. When the New Yorkers' went south for spring training in March of 1926, Nick Cullop was with them.

In his first season in the majors he rode the Yankee bench but did get into two games as a pinch hitter - he had one hit and one strike-out. Because of the sheer amount of talent on the Yankees Cullop was dealt to Washington and then Cleveland. Despite his promising minor league stats Cullop managed only .231 before he was sent back to Atlanta for the 1928 season.

The Crackers' fans welcomed Nick, his wife and remaining son back with open arms. If anything, Cullop's tragedy his previous stint in town made him an even more popular payer and he responded by hitting .352 with 17 homers. The Brooklyn Robins (they were nick-named "The Robins" after their popular manager Wilbert "Robby" Robinson and would be called "The Dodgers" after he left the club in 1932) took notice and when opening day 1929 came around Cullop was roaming the Ebbets Field as one of the Robins' back-up outfielders. Unfortunately a .195 batting average was not good enough to even stay in Brooklyn and he was sent down to Minneapolis for the 1930 season. If a being demoted a second time wasn't bad enough, things would get even worse for Nick.

During the winter of 1929-30 Nick's remaining son passed away when he contracted a fever and died. Unable to bear the death of their remaining son, Cullop's wife had a nervous break down and he spent the spring of 1930 nursing her back to health. The baseball season started off just as bad - in his 3rd game Cullop was beaned in the head. Throughout the first month of the season he suffered from a fear of the ball and in 15 at bats he struck-out 11 times.

With all the bad juju coming down on him, 1930 should have been a lousy season for Nick, but, like 1925 when Billy died, he put his head down and plowed ahead. For Nick Cullop 1930 was to be his best season ever. After that first month he suddenly regained his confidence and for the remaining 130 games he hit .359 and his 54 home runs was the best in the American Association. Just like in 1925 and 1928, the majors came knocking and Cullop was back in the bigs wearing a Cincinnati Reds uniform during the tail end of the 1930 season.

Although he made the Reds after spring training in 1931, his final season in the majors was to be as disappointing as all the others. His fielding became so erratic to the point he committed 3 errors on the same play when he charged in on a scorching ground ball - the ball took a bad hop and went through his legs - error number one. Cullop turned to snag the ball when it rebounded off the outfield wall and went through his legs again - error number two. Finally catching up with the darn thing he threw it towards third but the throw, rushed by the flustered outfielder, went wild and eluded the third baseman - error number 3. That fielding lapse plus a .263 average and the most strike-outs in the National league sealed his fate - after the season his contract was sold to Columbus- Nick was back in the American Association again.

For his part he was pretty positive about his brief major league career, noting that the teams he played on already had pretty good talent in place and he never really had the chance to play a full season and show what he could do. Now realizing he was back in the minors to stay, Cullop focused on learning how to manage a ball club. The Columbus Red Birds were part of the Cardinals vast farm system and in 1941 the team put him in charge of their Asheville Tourists club. For the next 19 years Nick was a popular and successful manager, mostly at the AAA level with Baltimore, Columbus and Milwaukee. He retired in 1960, a full 40 years after turning pro.

There's one last story about Nick that I think speaks a lot about the man. While skipper of the Columbus Jets in 1955, he had a black outfielder named Al Pinkston on the team. Although this was 10 years since Jackie Robinson had broke the color line in organized ball, racial tensions were still present and during a game with the Toronto Maple Leafs those tensions were hot and heavy. Toronto's pitcher Bill Miller sent Pinkston diving into the dirt one pitch after another until he finally started arguing about it. As the 2 teams started getting closer to a fight, Cullop apparently heard something he didn't like from the Leaf's first baseman Lou Limmer and knocked him flat on his keister with a left-hook. Cullop was thrown out of the game, but that wasn't all. The two teams remained in a high state of alert and the next inning all hell broke loose after a rough play at second base. Before it ended 40 players pounded on one another before 11 sheriff's deputies and 7 local Columbus cops restored order. Limmer, already hurting from Cullop's left-hook, was hospitalized with severe bruising to the face and body. Nick Cullop was fined $50 and made African-American newspapers and magazines across the country for standing up for his black outfielder.

Frankie Zak: The Reason I Love This Game

2012-01-18T10:53:00.000-08:00

For this post I thought I'd re-introduce everyone to the ballplayer whose story, more than anyone else, got me into researching obscure players and teams from baseball's past. His name is Frankie Zak and he was a buddy of my grandfather from the old neighborhood in Passaic, N.J. Frankie, like everyone else on Quincy Street was the son of Polish immigrants. Although he grew up athletic, he was no fan of baseball, unlike my grandfather and his cronies who were busy inventing ways to sneak into Ruppert Stadium in Newark and Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City. But that wasn't for Frankie, he didn't care for baseball.

In the summer of 1941, fresh out of high school, Zak ventured south to visit his school pal (and relative of mine) Eddie Sudol who was playing his first year of organized ball with the Tarboro Orioles in the Coastal Plain League. This was the bottom rung of the minors at the time and the Tarboro team had recently signed a working agreement with the Baltimore Orioles, an independent minor league team at the time. So anyway, Frankie Zak turns up in Tarboro one hot and humid day, only to find the team in desperate need of a shortstop. Zak, who was almost 6', lean and athletic, looked the part and was quickly signed to a Tarboro contract. It was only temporary, Frankie didn't care for baseball.

So Zak finishes the season with the 6th place Orioles, bats a lean .255 and fields his position with a .905 percentage, right about in the middle of the league. Not bad for a rookie who never played the position before. In normal times, it would be a tough call to say whether or not his first season at Tarboro was good enough to keep him in professional baseball, but these were not normal times. During the off season the Japs attacked Pearl Harbor and the country was thrust into a two-front war. Any able-bodied men who didn't rush to volunteer were being scooped up by the draft and baseball at all levels was being affected. It was a time when men like Frankie Zak got their chance at baseball immortality.

So with the war picking up steam, Frankie's rookie season was deemed good enough to be picked up by the Pirates organization who sent the young shortstop to the Class D Hornell Maples in the PONY League. While he didn't exactly tear up the league, he did boost his average to .271 in 129 games as the teams starting shortstop. He had 39 RBI's and belted 2 home runs, the only ones he ever hit in his career. The baseball odyssey of Frankie Zak was underway.

Spring training for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1943 was held in Muncie, Indiana due to wartime restrictions and while Zak didn't impress skipper Frankie Frisch enough to make the big club he was promoted to the Pirates highest minor league team, the Toronto Maple Leafs. The 1943 club was managed by ol' stubble beard himself, Burleigh Grimes, the cantankerous former Brooklyn spitball pitcher and manager. One of the club's outfielders was a young Ralph Kiner. Besides being the Leaf's starting shortstop he became noted for his speed on the bases as well. Zak batted .246 plus 9 doubles and a triple in all 150 games played that year, the only player on the team to do that. He stole 22 bases, was second in the league with 104 walks and led the league with 104 runs scored as the Maple Leafs won the pennant. He did, however, commit 50 errors at his position, but then again, who can find fault with that, Frankie never cared for baseball very much...

In 1944 the majors were decimated by the war, by now pretty much every player who could hold a rifle was in the service, leaving mostly 4F (military designation meaning not acceptable for service under the established physical, mental, or moral standards) players and guys just lucky enough not to be called yet. It was under these circumstances that enabled Frankie Zak to put on a uniform with the number 14 on the back and step out onto the field as a Pittsburgh Pirate. Zak's debut was on April 21, 1944 in Forbes Field against the Cincinnati Reds. With the Pirates losing 4-2 in the bottom of the ninth, with 11,377 fans in the stands, Frankie Zak batted for veteran catcher Al Lopez. He popped out. But still, Frankie Zak, the guy from the old neighborhood who didn't care for baseball, was now a major league baseball player!

How about that, getting a chance to do what most of us only dream of doing! But the career of Frankie Zak was only beginning.

Throughout the summer the young shortstop played backup to Frank Gustine and got into 87 games, frequently used as a pinch runner. Zak batted a hearty .300 with 3 doubles, a triple and 6 stolen bases thrown in there for good measure. But breaking the .300 mark mark was not the highlight of Zak's 1944 season. Getting named to the 1944 All-Star Game was! Yes, Frankie Zak, rookie back-up shortstop and occasional pinch-runner was named to represent the National League at the 1944 All-Star Game.

How the hell did this happen? Well, it's like this. Eddie Miller was picked to play in the game but became injured. Since the game was held in Pittsburgh, Frankie Zak was asked to step in. Although he didn't get into the game (Marty Marion played all 9 innings) he did feature in the official team portrait, mixed right in there with the best players of 1944.

The next year found Zak bouncing between Kansas City and Pittsburgh, playing just 15 games with the Pirates in 1945 and 21 in 1946. But Frankie made up for lack of playing time with a couple of legendary baseball stories that are still told by oldtimers. The first one takes place sometime in the 1944 season. The Pirates are playing Chicago at Wrigley Field and Frankie is trying to score on a double by outfielder Jim Russell. Rounding third, Zak is shoved by nasty little third baseman Eddie Stanky and an out of control Frankie tumbles all the way to the dugout. The ump waves in the run but neglects to discipline Stanky. Pirates manager Frankie Frisch vows to even the score for Zak and sure enough on the next play Jim Russell comes sliding into third, spikes high, as does manager Frankie Frisch, sliding in spikes high from the coaches box! The ump, Hall Of Famer Jocko Conlan, calls Russell safe and Frisch out of the game.

It's Opening Day, 1945. Pittsburgh is leading the Reds 1-0 in the fifth at Crosley Field and Frankie Zak beats out a bunt. Now there's two men on base. Reds pitcher Bucky Walters looks in to pitch to Jim Russell and Zak, noticing his shoe is untied, calls time. The first base umpire throws his hand up calling time out but Walters and the home plate ump didn't hear it in time. Walters throws and Russell belts the ball into the right field bleachers for a home run. Only it wasn't. The run wasn't allowed and after much argument, Russell returned to the batters box and Zak hung his head in shame, tying his cleats. The best the Pirates could do was score one run that inning and as luck would have it they lost 7-6. The next day Frankie Frisch got a telegram from Casey Stengel "Am rushing a pair of button shoes for Zak".

The last Frankie Zak story comes from the old catcher, Al Lopez. When he was the manager of the Cleveland Indians he used to tell this story: "I never like to see women in the dugout. In the first place they don't get a very good view. In the second place, they don't know how to duck. I even knew a fellow whose romance was broken up by a foul ball in the stands. His name was Frankie Zak - a shortstop when I was catching for Pittsburgh - and he fell in love with a Chicago girl. There was only one hitch. The girl's mother didn't want her daughter to have anything to do with a professional ballplayer. Frankie thought he knew how to break down a mothers prejudice. He arranged for the girl to bring her mother to a game. We were in Wrigley Field and it was Ladies' Day - 20,000 women in the park. And of all those people, who do you suppose got the foul ball in the face? That's right. The girl's mother. She was really hurt, too. And that was the end of the romance."

So what happened to Frankie Zak? Well, his contract was sold to the Yankees and he played for the famous Newark Bears, the same team my grandfather and his gang would try to bust into for free years before. He later played in the Pacific Coast League with Portland and San Diego before retiring in 1949, ending a 9 year odyssey in professional baseball. Wait, what about his friend he went to visit in Tarboro back in 1941? Well, Eddie Sudol never made the majors as a player, but he did make it as a National League umpire, working the World Series in 1965, 1971 and 1977 and it was Eddie Sudol who was behind the plate when Henry Aaron hit his 715th career home run.

Well, that's a lot to write about a guy who played only 123 major league games, right? Wrong. It's players like Frankie Zak who make this great game so interesting. For every Mickey Mantle and A-Rod there are thousands of Frankie Zak's out there, everyone of them with a bunch of stories just waiting to be told. It just takes a little digging and you'll find it. I did. Frankie Zak was the beginning of my interest in baseball research. Where else would I have heard of the Tarboro Orioles? Or learned that before the Orioles fielded a major league team in 1954, there was a team by the same name with a proud heritage and enough success that it could support a farm system of its own, independent of the major leagues? Each little story unearthed, every box score and faded photograph launches a million great yarns. That's why Frankie Zak, the guy from the neighborhood who never cared much for baseball, is the Patron Saint of The Infinite Baseball Card Set.

Now's Your Chance!

2012-01-11T18:48:00.000-08:00

Did Uncle Tommy play on a St. Louis Browns farm team in 1935 and you always wanted a card of that? Ever want to have your own card, pitching for the 1922 Baltimore Black Sox? Well, you sure can!

One of the little-known projects I take on are individual custom-made baseball cards done in the same style as The Infinite Baseball Card Set. Many of my clients use them for business or calling cards while others commission me to their whole baseball or softball team which, I'm told, sure as heck beats a dinky plastic trophy at the end of a hard-fought season!

All you need to do is send me a head shot, preferably with a ball cap on, your preferable pose (pitching, standing, batting, etc), the team you want and a write-up for the back (you can even throw some stats on there as well (now you have proof you did hit .376 that year) or choose a tobacco card style back with your business information on it - and leave the rest up to me. I will create your own card in the style of my card set and in a week or two you can have something very few folks can say they have - your own baseball card!

The drawing and back of the card, 500 cards all printed just like The Infinite Baseball Card Set and shipped to you is $250. Email me or go HERE if you are interested and we can go over the details. These are truly a little work of art, all your own. You know you've always wanted your own baseball card!

100. Chief Tokohama: The (almost) integration of the American League

2012-01-09T08:58:00.000-08:00

I don't like goodbyes, surprise parties and making a big deal out of anniversaries. That's why although this is the 100th card I've added to The Infinite Baseball Card Set, the character I've chosen and the story being told has no significant meaning. Card 100 is simply another great story from the dark corners of baseball history's creaky attic that needed to be retold...

Hot Springs, Arkansas, Spring, 1901: Baltimore Orioles manager John McGraw was taking a break from whipping his boys into fighting trim, getting them ready for the American League's inaugural season. As he walked back to the Eastland Hotel where his team was spending their Spring Training he passed a baseball diamond adjacent to the Eastland and McGraw paused to watch a team of ballplayers practice. The group was made up of the hotel's waiters and bellhops and as his discerning eyes automatically scanned the field evaluating each player, McGraw's attention focused on the second baseman. This fellow fielded flawlessly, his throws were rapid and accurate and at bat he was by far the best on the field. This man was a professional.

The only problem was he was black.

The second baseman that got McGraw worked up into a lather that day was Charley Grant, infielder for the Columbia Giants out of Chicago. Grant had taken a job in the off-season working as a bellhop at the Eastland Hotel and to play on the baseball team made up of some of the best black ballplayers in the land who were doubling as hotel employees. Many hotels down south, particularly in Hot Springs and Palm Beach, fielded virtual black all-star teams to entertain their rich clientele who came to their establishments for spa treatments and relaxation.

Charley Grant was a star among the black sporting fans in the north but unknown to the white world. A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Grant got his professional start with the Page Fence Giants, a traveling team out of Adrian, Michigan, in 1896. The Giants, started as a way to advertise the Page Fence Company, was one of black baseball's first great teams and were instrumental in demonstrating the talent of black ballplayers to the rural white communities whose teams they barnstormed against. A few years later Grant joined the Chicago-based Columbia Giants, teaming up with Negro baseball legends Sol White, Bill Holland and Home Run Johnson. The Columbia Giants claimed to be the best team in black baseball and by the time McGraw had spied him working out with the Eastland Hotel's ball club, Grant had received much praise as one of blackball's premier infielders.

Although John McGraw had been manager of the Orioles for a few years, the coming 1901 campaign was different - this season Baltimore would be part of the brand new American League. Started by disgruntled ex-National League players and owners, the American League teams scrambled to sign as many top players as they could and McGraw and his Orioles were no different. It's no surprise then that McGraw would try anything to get a ballplayer as talented as Charley Grant into a Baltimore uniform that season.

Now there's a few conflicting stories about how McGraw came to sign Grant to an Orioles contract. The one I'm going with was related in a 1942 article in the Chicago Defender. Turns out that Dave Wyatt, Grant's teammate on the Columbia Giants, had been employed previously at the Eastland Hotel and apparently knew John McGraw from his earlier spring training visits. Wyatt was a good middle infielder but was too dark skinned to think about passing in the white leagues. Charley, however, was not. He had light brown skin and even better, his hair was naturally strait. Wyatt came up with the idea to pass him off as an Indian and McGraw eagerly agreed. Grant, however, was hesitant about the scheme. He didn't feel comfortable masquerading as an Indian, but McGraw and Wyatt eventually convinced him to give it a try. The Orioles skipper told Wyatt to come up with a long Indian-sounding name and Charley Grant became "Grant-a-muscogee" of the Tuckahoma Tribe. By now newspaper reporters following the Orioles picked up on McGraw's new recruit and circled in on a good story. McGraw concocted the back story that Grant-a-muscogee turned up at a Baltimore practice one afternoon and insisted on a try-out which the Orioles manager reluctantly agreed to. Grant-a-muscogee claimed to be the son of a white father and a Native-American mother and had previously held down the second base job for the famed Nebraska Indians traveling baseball team. The scribes somehow got the name "Grant-a-muscogee" all fouled up and the faux-Indian infielder became "Tokohama" instead. Another story behind the Tokohama name has McGraw allegedly appropriating the name of a local river (although Negro league researcher Gary Ashwill failed to find said body of water). Whatever the origins, the sportswriters added the mandatory prefix "Chief" and introduced the newly minted Native-American to the white sporting world.

On the Orioles team, McGraw was fooling no one. Baltimore infielder George Rohe had grown up with Grant in Cincinnati and half a dozen other players knew him personally from their travels. What is surprising in hind-sight is that there was no reported animosity towards Grant because of his skin color. Much has been made of McGraw being "color blind" when it came to black ballplayers but I believe it was less a liberal attitude towards race than a blind desire to field the best possible team in order to win. That said, I find it quite remarkable that the Orioles, being a "Southern" team, voiced no opposition to playing alongside Grant. I'd say it speaks highly of his talent as a ballplayer that enabled him to be accepted so readily on the all-white Orioles.

With his cover story in place, newspapers on March 15th announced Tokohama's signing of a Baltimore contract. Grant's new identity as a Native-American seemed complete when the article describing his signing added a footnote hoping that McGraw could prevent him from "following in the footsteps of Sockalexis, a Penobcot, who played brilliant ball for Tebeau's Cleveland team some years ago until fire water and bad companions ruined him, and eventually made him a vagrant and tramp, although he was a college graduate."

Tokohama, or "Tokie" as he was called by his teammates, trained with the Orioles and McGraw told reporters that he'd be joining the team when they broke camp - his only quandary was whether he'd be Baltimore's starting second baseman or outfielder. But then Charley Grant's notoriety caught up with him.

Sometime around the end of March someone unmasked Tokohama as the Columbia Giants star. Most books credit Charlie Comiskey of outing Grant when McGraw brought his team into Chicago to play the White Stockings. Intrepid researcher Gary Ashwill has uncovered that Baltimore didn't travel to Chicago until late May, more than 2 months after newspapers printed the story of McGraw's ruse. The story is a bit more muddier it seems.

As I stated above, the Tokohama story began unravelling in late March. At first McGraw and Grant brushed off the accusations and McGraw apparently tried a brilliant end-run by denying his second baseman was the famous Negro ballplayer named Grant who played for Buffalo. By bringing up the Grant that played for Buffalo, McGraw sent the scribes on a wild goose chase to track down the star of the Buffalo team, indeed a Negro named Grant, but he was Frank Grant, not Charley Grant. Frank Grant was a very well-known ballplayer but was quite different in appearance, being much older and stouter, when compared to his Tokohama who was in his early twenties and lean. The crafty McGraw seems to have thrown up enough smoke to cast some doubt on the stories circulating about Grant. In the midst of the controversy newspapers reported that the Orioles still considered Tokie part of the team and McGraw was quoted in several articles as specifically stating his intention of bringing him back to Baltimore. However by the second week in April the story all seemed to fall apart. Papers reported Charley Grant, aka Tokohama, signing on as the Columbia Giants captain and second baseman for the 1901 season.

And with that, Grant packed his bags and headed back to Chicago.

But McGraw wasn't giving up just yet. As late as the middle of May papers wrote of the Orioles manager demanding the right to have "his Indian" play on the team. Which brings us to the Charlie Comiskey part of the story.

As Gary Ashwill discovered, Baltimore didn't appear in Chicago until early May, 1901, a month after Grant had reverted to his real name and re-signed with the Columbia Giants. As the legend goes, Tokohama was finally and irrevocably unmasked while playing in Chicago by a combination of Comiskey's racism and black fans who knew he was indeed black, not a Native-American. The 1942 Chicago Defender article relates a different story of how Grant's teammate on the Giants, Pete Burns and a die hard black fan by the name of Tom Evans were actually the ones who put an end to Tokohama's Baltimore career.

Now this next little bit is speculation on my part: since Grant was already in Chicago with the Columbia Giants, and recent articles had McGraw still insisting that he was going to be part of the Orioles, I'd go so far as to suggest that when McGraw took his team into Chicago, Grant suited up and took his place on the Baltimore bench when they faced Comiskey's White Stockings.

For some reason, Burns went to the Chicago Tribune and told its sports staff that "McGraw was now hiring Negroes on his team." Why Burns would do such a thing is hard to speculate, but perhaps he was angered that Grant would abandon the Columbia Giants, thus robbing them of one of their star players and team captain. Or maybe the team owner put Burns up to it in order to protect his investment. What ever Burns' motive, The Tribune dispatched a correspondent to Cincinnati to check up on it, but Dave Wyatt, Grant's teammate and the man who put this whole thing in motion, was one step ahead. He briefed Grant's mother on the whole Tokohama back story and when the Tribune man showed up on her doorstep she spun the same Cherokee story as her son and the reporter returned to Chicago empty-handed.

Concurrently, that super fan, Tom Evans, showed up at the Chicago-Baltimore game, jumped onto the field and marched over to the Orioles bench to say "Hello Charley. Where'd they get all this Indian stuff about you?" Newspaper reporters present that day who witnessed the exchanged grabbed Evans and he spilled the whole story of how that fellow on the Baltimore bench was no Indian but the great Negro second baseman, Charley Grant. The Chicago Tribune, previously thwarted in its attempt to get the story, now confidently blew the lid off the whole scam. Ban Johnson, the larger than life President of the American League called McGraw, Grant and Wyatt before him and ordered Baltimore to release Grant from his contract. The reason for his release was not attributed to his skin color but because Johnson believed "the league could not go on record as deceiving the fans by fostering a player under false identity." Grant went back to the Columbia Giants and McGraw left Johnson's office with a lifelong hatred for the American League and its President.

Charley Grant played 15 more years on some of the best early blackball teams including the Cuban X Giants and the Philadelphia Giants. After retiring from the game he returned to Cincinnati and worked as a janitor in an apartment building until his untimely death in 1932 when he was hit by an out of control car that hopped the curb and struck him. He died shortly after he was brought to the hospital.

99. Leon Day: The 1945 G.I. World Series

2011-12-29T19:32:00.000-08:00

Writing up the Subway Sam Nahem story last month, I related how I learned about him from Negro League All-Star and Baseball Hall Of Fame member Leon Day, who'd played with Nahem during the war on one of the first, if not the first, integrated military baseball team. Like I related in the Nahem story, Leon told me that the game he was most proud of in his long and storied career was the one he pitched against Patton's 3rd Army team in the 1945 G.I. World Series. It's a great and little known part of baseball history and I thought it deserved a place here at the Infinite Baseball Card Set...

By 1942 Leon was one of the best pitchers in baseball. During that year's East-West All-Star Game Day entered the game in the 7th inning and beat Satchel Paige, striking out 5 of the first 7 batters. The next year Newark had a lousy team, hampered by players entering the service and Day fell to 4-5 but he pulled extra duty as an outfielder and hit a nice .304 before he too got the call from Uncle Sam.

Day shipped out to England with the 818th Amphibian Battalion and went ashore on Utah Beach on June 6th, 1944. Leon drove a DUKW, a six-wheeled amphibious vehicle, across France and Belgium throughout 1944 and '45. When the war ended, Day was recruited to pitch for the Com Z OISE All-Stars baseball team that represented the Forward Base at Reims, France. With the war over and thousands of troops anxiously waiting around to go home, baseball leagues were organized to take the men's minds away from mischief. The U.S. Army had a plethora of former big league ballplayers and each unit fielded a competitive team with the local champs going through a serious of playoffs culminating in the G.I. World Series to be held in September, 1945.

The OISE All-Stars were a scrappy hodge-podge made up of former semi-pro players and low-level minor leaguers put together by former Brooklyn Dodgers and St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Subway Sam Nahem. With the inclusion of Leon Day and former Kansas City Monarch slugger Willard Brown the All-Stars became one of the first integrated ball clubs in the military. Against all odds, the OISE team decisively beat team after team, steadily advancing through the playoffs.

Meanwhile, on the other side of Europe in occupied Germany, the 71st Infantry Division Red Circlers team pounded their way through the playoffs. Led by Cincinnati Reds pitcher Ewell Blackwell and St. Louis Cardinals star Harry Walker, the Red Circlers boasted an alarming 9 former major leaguers and 3 more who'd play in the bigs right after the war. Representing General George Patton's 3rd Army, the Red Circlers were the odd-on favorites, and just to be sure, Patton had 7 former pro ballplayers transferred to the 71st Infantry just in time for the opening game of the G.I. World Series.

On September 2nd, 1945, 50,000 GI's packed Nuremberg Stadium to see the first game of the best of 5 series. Armed forces radio was on hand to broadcast the games to the thousands of other GI's stationed throughout Europe and Africa. It wasn't the real world Series, but there was enough major league talent on hand to make it enjoyable. During the course of World War II, no less than 500 big league ballplayers and 4,000 minor leaguers were in the service, and all the best ones seemed to be on Patton's team. As expected, the Red Circlers' beat up on Bobby Keane, former Brooklyn Bushwicks semi-pro hurler, and won the first game 9-2.

The next day was Labor Day in America and in Nuremberg 45,000 soldiers filled the stands of Hitler's former stadium expecting to watch another one-sided contest. Coach Nahem gave the ball to Leon Day. Facing major league talent was nothing new to Day, heck he was a veteran of the Negro National League and had out-dueled Satchel Paige himself on numerous occasions. The Red Circlers may be more well known than the OISE All-Stars, but that didn't mean Leon Day couldn't handle them. Facing off against minor leaguer Walter "Ole" Olson, Day was simply magnificent, holding the big league sluggers to just 4 hits and not allowing a single run for the first 8 innings. However Olson also did well, keeping the game scoreless despite being hit hard by the All-Stars. OISE's first baseman Tony Jaros, a 6'-3" giant who played Big Ten basketball for Minnesota before the war, belted out 3 doubles in the game and Subway Sam Nahen added two doubles of his own to the mix. Finally in the sixth with no one out, St. Louis semi-pro Joe Herman singled followed by a walk to Roy Marion. That brought up Kansas City Monarch All-Star Willard Brown who banged out an RBI singles scoring Herman. Jaros came up next but went down swinging. Nick "Warehouse" Macone popped out and then Olson fanned Ty Richardson to get out of the inning. The next inning the All-Stars jumped on Olson again, this time Emmet Altenburg tripled to right-center field followed by Coach Nahem's double to the same place, pushing across a run.

The next inning Patton's men came to life and finally tapped Day for a run. With two outs, St. Louis Cardinals All-Star Harry "The Hat" Walker got a double off of Day and then Cincinnati Reds' second baseman Benny Zientara doubled him home. With the tying run on second and the go-ahead run at the plate in the form of Pittsburgh Pirate Johnny Wyrostek, Leon Day, proving that the previous 2 years in the service didn't hamper his pitching, struck him out to end the inning. It was a surprising upset and Day proved he could more than hold his own against white major league talent. All told, Day had struck out 10 batters and walked only 2 that day and the OISE All-Stars evened the series at 1 game a piece.

The series then shifted to Reims, France where the OISE All-Stars were based. Subway Sam penciled himself in as the starting pitcher and tossed a great game, winning 2-1. With the All-Stars now unbelievably up 2 games to 1, Leon Day was tapped to pitch game 4.

Unfortunately Leon didn't have his stuff that afternoon and by the 4th inning he's given up 4 runs on 6 hits and was taken out of the game. The Red Circlers won 5-0 and evened up the series. The fifth and deciding game was a see-saw event with the All-Stars eventually scoring the winning run in the 9th inning to take the game and the series, 2-1. Now OISE was supposed to be headed to Rome to take on the Mediterranean champs but unfortunately things got fowled up. Not content with being the losing team, many of the major league players on the Red Circlers got themselves transferred to the OISE All-Stars and many of the unknown semi-pros who were the heart and soul of the scrappy team were left behind in Reims. Leon was still bitter about that years later when retelling the story. But, in the end I guess it didn't matter all that much, Leon got his honorable discharge and in his first Negro League game threw a no-hitter against the Philly Stars on opening day, 1946. While not as flashy and well known as Satchel Paige, Leon Day was shown the ultimate tribute when a panel of his peers elected him into the Baseball Hall of Fame shortly before his death in 1995.

Pete Hill Card Set Photoshoot Outtakes

2011-12-19T16:35:00.000-08:00

Card Sets Have Arrived!

2011-12-16T12:19:00.000-08:00

The Pete Hill Card Sets have arrived! Today I've been sorting them into sets (we're not exactly hi-tech here) and numbering each one by hand and the first ones will be mailed out on Saturday... I'm not one to crow, but THESE CARDS MIGHT BE THE BEST I'VE DONE SO FAR! Each one holds up on its own and when viewed together as a whole set you can see and read about the whole career of the dead-ball ear's greatest black ballplayer. The different uniforms really make each card visually appealing and Gary Ashwill's impeccably researched text and statistics make this a card set like no other. And if you order a set by December 31st you get THIS CARD as a bonus! Alright, that's all I'm going say about them and let the pictures speak for themselves...

98. Russ Van Atta: The Babe, Oil and One Dead Finger

2011-12-13T11:30:00.001-08:00

Well, it's Christmas time again and I'm preparing for my trip back to New Jersey to visit my Brother and Mom. Although I left that place when I was 17 and never really looked back, Christmastime always makes me a bit nostalgic about growing up there and I get a little homesick for my home state. So, like last year at this time when I did a feature on New Jersey native Johnny Vander Meer, I'd like to introduce you to another son of The Garden State, former Yankee pitcher Russ Van Atta.

Back when I was growing up in New Jersey, my Grandparents would take my brother and I out into the country of the northwest part of the state to pick apples. Sussex County was as far away from the belching smokestacks, endless overpasses and teaming city streets of the eastern part you think of when the word "New Jersey" is invoked. No, Sussex County was and still is a dazzling wilderness of rolling green foothills, black and white milk cows, race horses and tidy red barns. It was the reason New Jersey's often-derided nickname is "The Garden State."

Now back then, in the late 1970's, chances were if you stopped in any diner or tavern in the county there would be one thing that they all had in common besides offering cold Ballantine Beer in bottles - an autographed picture of Babe Ruth. Every single establishment had one, even hotels, golf courses, hardware stores... they were as common as a calendar. Who was behind this county-wide plethora of Bambino ephemera? The Sheriff, that's who.

Long before he was known as "The Sheriff", Russ Van Atta was just another poor kid trying everything he could to escape the zinc mines that dotted the foothills of Northwestern New Jersey. Understandably, working underground all day for 53 cents an hour wasn't how he wanted to spend the rest of his life. Like many other young kids in the United States before and since, Russ figured baseball was his way out. A southpaw pitcher, Van Atta was good enough to have been offered a partial scholarship to Penn State in 1924. Unlike most of his well-to-do classmates, Van Atta took on any odd job he could find in order cover school costs - making the beds in fraternity houses and keeping the furnaces lit during the bitter winter months. By the time graduation rolled around Van Atta had firmly established himself as the Nittany Lion's ace pitcher, losing only 1 game in 4 seasons.

For a $250 bonus, super-scout Paul Kritchell got Van Atta's signature on a New York Yankees contract and by June the kid from the mines was dressed in pinstripes, sitting on the Yankees bench wondering when he was going to pitch. Manager Miller Huggins quickly waved away any delusions the kid had about cracking the Yank's rotation when he sat him down and told him he didn't even trust him to pitch batting practice, let a lone a real game. No, the newly-minted college grad was going to Hartford in the Eastern League for seasoning.

He was 8-4 in 24 games for the Hartford Senators with a 2.37 ERA. In August he went the full 9 innings against the Boston Braves, shutting the National Leaguers out on 4 hits. The word was he was wild but talented and the next year the Yankees moved him up to their St. Paul team.

Van Atta now suffered through two seasons of bad luck and even worse pitching. The control problems became a real issue and by the time spring 1931 rolled around all Van Atta had to show for two seasons was a lousy 7-14 record. During the off-season he contemplated giving up game but eventually decided to give it the old college try. It was a good choice.

New to the Saints in 1931 was veteran Cardinals and Giants catcher Frank Snyder. Working closely with Van Atta, Snyder used his 16 years of major league experience to mold the discouraged southpaw into a first-class pitcher. By August he was considered the best pitcher in the American Association and finished 13-5 for the '31 pennant winning Saints.

The following year was Van Atta's break-out season as a pitcher. He tied for league-leader in wins with 22 and on May 19th, 1932 Van Atta barely missed making a baseball history by following up teammate Slim Harriss' no-hitter of the previous afternoon with one of his own against the Kansas City Blues. Van Atta's no-hit bid was busted up in the 8th when Pat Collins doubled and he had to settle for a one-hitter. Together the two St. Paul pitchers tossed 17 2/3 consecutive scoreless innings. By now Van Atta was considered as a no-questions asked sure thing and after the Yankees struck their spring training camp and headed north to start the 1933 season, Russ Van Atta was wearing his own set of pinstripes with the number 14 on the back, his signature freshly inked on a $3,500 Yankee contract for the season.

On April 25th the Yankees were in Griffith Stadium to play the Washington Senators. Once the butt of many a joke, the Senators now possessed a talented team that would eventually derail the mighty Yankees' annual pennant. Russ Van Atta took the ball and began one of the most memorable and infamous debut performances in baseball.

Van Atta had the Senators handcuffed and scoreless for the first 3 innings. In the top half of the 4th, Yankee outfielder Ben Chapman came to bat. Chapman was a mediocre ballplayer who more than made up for his inadequacies with ruthless determination and a mean streak 16 miles long. On the professional, sterile New York Yankees, Chapman stuck out like a sore thumb, provoking fights and cultivating his reputation as a rabid anti-Semite, to the point of taunting Jewish fans in Yankee Stadium with the Hitler salute. So Chapman hits a double off Monte Weaver and after rounding first sees Washington's star second baseman Buddy Myer blocking the base. Chapman bears down and slides into the base spiking the hell out of Myer in the process. Buddy Myer, a tough ballplayer himself, jumped to his feet and kicked Chapman in the head. Being Jewish he undoubtedly figured Chapman's aversion towards his religion had something to do with the intentional spiking. The two went at it and slugged it out. Both benches emptied as the players ran onto the field to fight.

Van Atta was among them but was quickly grabbed by manager McCarthy and pushed back towards the bench - he was their pitcher and the Yanks couldn't afford to have him be thrown out of the game, or even worse, hurt. When he reached the Yankee dugout he discovered there were only two men still sitting there, Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. From the dugout Van Atta marveled at the orgy of violence that unfolded before him. Finally the umpires managed to separate the players and promptly ejected both Chapman and Myer. As Chapman walked past the Senators bench on his way to the clubhouse, Washington pitcher Earl Whitehill shouted something at him and Chapman belted the pitcher in the mouth.

Now all hell broke loose.

An estimated 300 fans rushed onto the field to attack Chapman. Yankee outfielder Dixie Walker did his best to defend his teammate but was soon overwhelmed. The rest of the Yankees charged through the crowd to rescue the 2 men as the police beat back the enraged spectators trying to restore order. 20 minutes later it was over. In addition to Chapman and Myer, Dixie Walker was ejected and a handful of Washington fans were taken away in handcuffs. It was probably one of the worst riots in Major League history, but the day wasn't over yet.

Van Atta, much to his credit, resumed his mastery on the mound, unwilling to become rattled by the battle that took place. At bat he registered hit after hit, going 4 for 4, all singles, knocking in a run and scoring three. He kept the Senators to five hits and shut them out 16-0. It was one of the best debut performances for a pitcher to date but it was totally overshadowed by the riot in the 4th inning.

To Van Atta it didn't really matter because everything he did that season went his way. With an already overpowering fastball, the rookie worked with veteran pitcher Herb Pennock and developed a nasty little curve, the key being the pressure he put on the ball with the middle finger. As the season wore on number 14 registered win after win and closed out the season 12-4, his .750 win-loss percentage leading the quartet of Yankee starters. Besides his dominance on the mound Van Atta batted a nice .283 to boot. New York finished 7 games behind Washington who absolutely crushed the competition that year - all except the rookie Van Atta who was the winning pitcher 5 of the 6 times the Yanks managed to defeat the pennant-bound Senators.

Van Atta went home to the Jersey foothills a conquering hero. The Sporting News, back then the New York Times of the baseball world, picked him, along with Hank Greenberg and Joe Medwick, for their 1933 freshman all-star team. Besides the accolades in the sporting press, Van Atta had also made some influential friends, namely his teammate and the most famous athlete in the world, Babe Ruth.

The big slugger was winding down his career in New York and befriended a the young ballplayer from North Jersey. Both the Babe and Van Atta had a passion for the outdoors - hunting, fishing and golf, and Van Atta proudly took the big slugger home with him on off days to sample what his corner of The Garden State had to offer. The Babe fell in love with Van Atta's hometown and continued to visit there every year up into the 1940's. The locals who were already proud of their hometown hero now really had something to crow about, Van Atta brought The Babe home with him. Local roadhouses, well-stocked with liquor since the recent appeal of prohibition, all boasted Bambino visits and every golf course in that part of the state proudly displayed a personally autographed picture of the big guy.

Anyone in the know predicted great things for this lefty and when the Yankees sent him his 1934 contract filled out with the same $3,500 he made in '33, Van Atta wasn't shy about sending it back with a counter offer of $7,500. Both parties settled for $6,000 and Van Atta was so well touted for a great future even that made the papers nationwide. Then a week later, this tiny article appeared:

HOUSE BURNS.
Russell Van Atta, New York Yankee pitcher, his mother, wife and child were left homeless when fire destroyed the family residence at Lake Mohawk, near Sparta, N.J. on December 13. Firemen from Sparta tried to save the house but the flames had gained such head-way that their efforts were unavailing.

Losing your house was a lousy way to cap off a great year, but so long as no one was injured, Van Atta had the world at this feet. Baseball season, and what was supposed to be another great year, was right around the corner.

But right from the start something was wrong. His fastball lost it's sting and the new-found curve left town. By May Van Atta had been knocked out of the box 4 times and quickly slipped from New York's starting rotation. The former phenom soon found himself in the bullpen, back then a shameful demotion for such a young player. 1934 ended with a disappointing 3-5 record with an unacceptable 6.34 E.R.A. Newspapers debated Van Atta's season - was it the dreaded sophomore jinx, did he strain his arm in spring training, maybe the other batters around the league simply "figured" the southpaw out. No one knew for sure until the real reason finally leaked out.

Remember that December fire? Well, there was an injury that fateful night. As the fire engulfed the family home, Van Atta took stock of his family members - mother, wife, child, dog... wait, where was the dog? Realizing his cocker spaniel was missing Van Atta dashed back into the burning house to find his dog. In the rescue attempt somehow the pitcher sustained a terrible cut on the index finger of his left hand, severing the nerves. Van Atta staggered back outside clutching his pitching hand only to discover his dog waiting for him.

As the winter turned to spring, Van Atta's finger healed in appearance but the nerves had been destroyed. He could no longer get a good grip on the ball which pretty much threw his newly-found curve ball out the window and robbed his fastball of its velocity. He told no one about the injury, not the Yankees, not even his wife. In spring training he muddled through, trying to get by on his fastball as best he could but the finger was so badly damaged he could run a lighted match along it with out feeling a thing - not a bad cocktail party trick but meaningless for a big league pitcher trying to stay in the game.

After his wipe out in 1934, Van Atta stumbled through spring training in '35 before being sold for the waiver price to the St. Louis Browns. Van Atta's career was effectively over. He went 18-32 with the miserable Brownies, all the while feuding with their despot of a manager, Rogers Hornsby. He held on in the Browns' bullpen until the spring of 1940 and then returned home to the foothills of New Jersey. Still a popular fella, Van Atta ran for Sheriff of Sussex County and with the help of his old pal Babe Ruth, easily won. The Babe's campaign pitch was simple: with a wink of the eye he told the locals if you don't elect Russ, I'm not coming back to this part of the state anymore. And that's how Russ Van Atta became known as "Sheriff" Van Atta. A few years later as The Babe lay dying from cancer, Van Atta made the trek to his hospital bedside to bid his old pal goodbye. He died 2 days later.

After a term as sheriff he moved on to the post of County Freeholder and then on to a highly successful career as a representative of the Gulf Oil Company. Shrewd land deals made him a wealthy man. Renown throughout Sussex County as an all-around good guy, "Sheriff" Van Atta spent his retirement traveling around the country visiting his old teammates, reliving his once promising career and reveling in all the friendships he made. Alzheimers finally claimed the old southpaw and Sheriff Van Atta died at the age of 80 on October 6, 1986.

97. Sam Nahem: Subway Sam vs. The World

2011-12-06T20:18:00.000-08:00

About a year ago when I was researching Jewish players I wanted to write about (and draw) for the first issue of 21: The Illustrated Journal of Outsider Baseball, my old friend Leon Day came to mind. Not that Leon was a Jew - he was in fact one of the greatest Negro League pitchers of all time, a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown and I was fortunate to know him back in the late 80's. No, I thought of Leon because of the conversations I would have with him in his baseball room on the second floor of his Baltimore row house. Leon would talk about anyone and everyone else, heaping praise on his teammates on the Newark Eagles as well as famed opponents such as Satchel Paige, Roy Campanella and Josh Gibson. It would always take a lot of prodding to get Leon to talk about his own career and the first thing I remember asking him was "what was the best memory you have from playing baseball?"

Without pausing he told me about the 1945 G.I. World Series he pitched in after the fall of Nazi Germany. Leon played on an integrated team called the OISE All Stars that represented a supply unit of the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps. After beating all the competition in France and Belgium they were to meet the formidable team from Patton's 3rd Army who'd decimated all the German and Austrian based Army teams. Patton liked a winner and his team was made up of the best major league talent serving in the U.S. Army in Europe, many of the players finding themselves on his team after a round of shady back-room transfers from their old units into his 3rd Army. Looking like a David going to meet Goliath, Leon's scrappy OISE All-Stars were coached by a former major league pitcher and Jew from New York named "Subway Sam" Nahem. Subway Sam. Now that was a name I couldn't forget and I stored it away in the back of my mind until he reemerged to take his rightful place on page 13 of 21: The Illustrated Journal of Outsider Baseball...

Teammates in the minor leagues called him “Subway Sam” because he was a real-live New Yorker, the first many had ever seen outside a movie theater. But Subway Sam was different in many other ways as well. Born in New York City to a family of affluent Syrian Jews, his first language was Arabic. Sam loved baseball but was unable to break into his high school team’s lineup. Undeterred, he played sandlot ball and by the time he entered Brooklyn College he was good enough to join the college team as a pitcher, making a name for himself by beating rivals Fordham University with a 6 hitter and St. John’s University with a 3 hitter.

When no major league teams came to him, Sam went to them. In 1935 he showed up at Ebbets Field one day and impressed manager Casey Stengel enough so that he was hired to pitch batting practice. The Dodgers sent Nahem to the Clinton Owls in Iowa where he finished the 1937 season with a nice 15-5 record. In the off-season he finished up law school at St. John’s. Being a New Yorker and a Jew already made Subway Sam stand out amongst his teammates but being a spectacle-wearing college-educated lawyer really separated him from the pack. He was also known to read the classics like Balzac in the dugout and his views on the integration of baseball put him at odds with the majority of his peers. Sam felt that many were against allowing blacks into the white leagues simply because there were only so many roster spots as it was and with integration there would be even fewer opportunities for the more marginal players. At a time when most in the low minors kept their heads down and did not make waves, Subway Sam was an idealist who believe people deserved more and he dedicated himself to try to make it a reality.

At the end of the 1938 season Sam made his debut with the Dodgers, a 6-hit complete game victory. Sam toiled in the back waters of professional baseball finally getting the call back to the big show after being traded to the Cardinal organization. Sam pitched in 26 games for St. Louis, mostly in relief and ended the year with a 5-2 record. The next year he was traded to Philadelphia where he appeared in 35 games record. The next year he was traded to Philadelphia where he appeared in 35 games and posted a 1-3 record for the dreadful Phillies. Serving in Europe during the war he was manager of the OISE All-Stars, a team made up of semi-pro and Negro league players. Sam joined the great Leon Day making a formidable one-two pitching staff that faced Patton’s 3rd Army team in front of over 50,000 G.I.’s in Nurnberg’s Zeppelin Field. Patton’s team was stocked with former major league stars like Ewell Blackwell, Harry Walker, Johnny Wyrostek, Benny Zientara and Bob Ramazzotti but behind the pitching of Subway Sam and Leon Day the underdog OISE All-Stars emerged the winners of the 1945 G.I. World Series.

Coming back from the war, Sam practiced law during the week and pitching on the weekends with the Brooklyn Bushwicks. Although termed semi-pro, the Bushwicks had a huge following and boasted many future and former major league players on their roster. It was while with the Bushwicks that Sam participated in a little-known baseball “world” series. A prototype of the current pre-season series held today, The Inter-American Tournament was held in Caracas, Venezuela and featured one team from Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela and the United States. The Bushwicks, who rarely ventured outside Brooklyn, were invited to represent America. Facing such Latin stars as Chico Carrasquel and Bobby Avila, Sam was the ace of the Bushwick’s staff, winning 3 and losing 1 as the American team won the month-long series with a 9-3 record. Subway Sam had the honor of winning the championship game, a 7-6 win over the Cuban team. After returning to the States, Nahem had one more trip to the majors when he went 3-3 for the Phillies in 1948.

After retiring from baseball, Sam Nahem went out west to the Bay area and put into practice his long held views of social equality. Subway Sam became a union organizer and tirelessly worked to better the conditions of the members of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union. Sam organized strikes and participated in negotiations even after he retired from his position.

Subway Sam died at the age of 88, leaving behind the story of one of the more interesting guys ever to wear spikes.

Limited Edition Pete Hill Card!

2011-11-29T11:07:00.001-08:00

As a bonus for Pre-Ordering the Pete Hill card set you will also receive this additional Pete Hill card depicting him in the distinctive flannels worn by the 1906 Philadelphia Giants. This card is not part of the Pete Hill card set and is only available as a special offer!

Pete Hill was the complete ballplayer, an excellent fielder and a hard hitter who rarely struck out. He was most compared to Ty Cobb for his natural ability and fiery play. His skill on the basepaths was unrivaled. Hill played for some of the greatest early negro teams starting with the Pittsburgh Keystones, then the Philadelphia Giants from 1904 to 1907 and the Leland Giants from 1907 to 1910. He also played 6 winters in Cuba. With Rube Foster’s American Giants in 1911 Pete hit safely in 115 of 116 games and he won the Cuban batting title that same year with a .365 batting average. Hill was captain of the American Giants and Foster considered him his "field general.” In 1919 and took over as manager of the Detroit Stars, and batted .391 in 1921. Hill finished up his career in 1925 as the player-manager of the powerful Black Sox of Baltimore. Pete Hill died Buffalo in 1951 and was inducted to the Hall Of Fame in 2006.

Just in time for the Holidays! Joining forces with famed Negro League researcher Gary Ashwill and Pete Hill's great nephew, Major Ron Hill I am proud to bring to you a beautiful 15 card tribute to one of the greatest black ballplayers of all time - PETE HILL. Many of you are familiar with Pete's career which spanned the first quarter of the 20th century. Each of the cards picture Pete on one of the many teams he played for - The Philadelphia Giants, Havana Reds, Chicago American Giants, Leland Giants, Baltimore Black Sox, Detroit Star, Cuban X Giants - and many more - Pete Hill's baseball odyssey found him playing on some of the greatest blackball teams of the dead-ball era. The illustrations I did for this set are some of the best ones I've done and the amount of research I put in trying to make each uniform as accurate as possible is something I'm really proud of. Working on this set I was so tempted to slip one or two into the website to show them off, but I held myself back in order to make all 15 of these illustrations new to everyone. The back of each card tells the life story of this talented Hall of Famer, all written and painstakingly researched by Gary Ashwill. Besides the narrative Gary has also gone so far as to compile Pete's statistics for his career in the Negro and Cuban Leagues as well as his career totals against Major and Minor League competition.

I can't tell you how unique this card set is, as far as I know no one has ever attempted to do something like this before and speaking for myself, I'm proud to be part of it! The first run will be of 1000 numbered sets for $25 each.

New Card Set Dedicated to the Career of Pete Hill!

2011-11-24T13:26:00.000-08:00

Buck O'Neil Illustrations at the Orioles' Spring Training Facility

2011-11-11T15:24:00.000-08:00

Earlier this year I was honored to be commissioned to illustrate 3 panels depicting the baseball career of Buck O'Neil. Anyone who's watched Ken Burn's documentary "Baseball" knows who Buck is, his great camera presence and lively commentary on the Negro Leagues made him the instant star of that epic mini-series. I'd met Buck a few times in the late 80's and early 90's and illustrating this triptych to pay homage to one of the games' leading goodwill ambassadors was a great thrill. Buck would be 100 this year and the Baltimore Orioles made the great decision to honor Buck by naming their Twin Lakes, Florida complex after him.

From the Baltimore Sun...

Orioles to honor Buck O'Neil on Sunday

The Orioles will hold a ceremony Sunday to honor Negro leagues pioneer Buck O’Neil at their minor league facility in Sarasota, Fla.

O’Neil, who died in 2006, would have been 100 years old Sunday. The star first baseman and manager spent part of his childhood in Sarasota, home to the Orioles’ Buck O’Neil Baseball Complex at Twin Lakes Park. O’Neil, who went on to scout and coach in the major leagues, worked to preserve the history and promote awareness of the Negro leagues.

The Orioles will unveil three illustrated baseball cards of O’Neil created by artist Gary Cieradkowski, whose works honor Negro leagues players who never had cards of their own. The O’Neil cards have been displayed at the minor league complex. An honorary plaque will also be hung at the main entrance to the complex’s administrative building.

Sarasota County commissioners Carolyn Mason and Joe Barbetta will also proclaim Sunday Buck O’Neil Day in Sarasota.

I'd like to thank Orioles Vice-President of Planning and Development Janet Marie Smith for recommending me to Art Director Keith Kellner to commission me to do the Buck O'Neil illustrations.

Veterans Day, 2011

2011-11-11T06:41:00.000-08:00

I originally posted the story of Captain Eddie Grant, former New York Giants 3rd baseman, 1 year ago in honor of Veterans Day. To show my respect and gratitude to all the men and women who interrupted their lives in order to serve and protect this country, I'd like to post it again, my small way to say thank you.

On a day like today, Veteran's Day, I want to feature a real hero. These days it seems anyone who does anything can be termed a hero. We are losing the real meaning of that word and that is something that really bothers me, especially when I learn about ordinary men and women who somehow rise to the top and emerge as real heroes. Miners trapped in Chile may be survivors and noteworthy, but they are not heroes. But, instead of writing an introduction outing the many pseudo-heroes that the media seems to create, I will let the story of a real, bona-fide hero speak for itself.

They called him "Harvard Eddie." At a time when most ballplayers barely had a high school education, third baseman Eddie Grant, Harvard Class of 1909, was a member of the Massachusetts Bar, a full-fledged lawyer. He was also a darn good third baseman, batting .322 for Jersey City and leading the Eastern League during his first year in pro ball. The next season, 1907, Grant was called up to the Philadelphia Phillies. He quickly gained attention, not from his bat or fielding skills, but for what he would say on the field: when calling out his claim on a pop fly, instead of yelling the common "I GOT it!", Harvard Eddie called out the proper phrase, "I HAVE it!" much to the amusement of his more modestly educated teammates.

During off seasons Grant returned to Boston to practice law, but each spring he took up baseball again. Traded to Cincinnati in 1911, he lost something at the plate and his batting average plummeted. The death of his wife after barely 9 months of marriage might have been the reason why. In 1913 the New York Giants picked Grant up and although he rode the bench more often than not, John McGraw took a liking to the scholarly third sacker and made him the Giants' bench coach. As much as he loved the game, Grant disliked the life of a part-time coach and player and a the age of 32, retired to pursue his law career full-time.

The Great War had been raging in Europe for 3 years by now and many of Grant's Harvard classmates were active participants even before the U.S. entered the war. Whether they drove ambulances for one of the volunteer organizations operating just behind the trenches or flew airplanes for the French in the Lafayette Flying Corps, college educated men of that era felt a sense of duty and adventure that sadly seems lacking these days. Once America entered the war in April of 1917, even more of these privileged men from wealthy families left their lucrative careers and easy lives to become officers in the rapidly expanding U.S. Army. Back then the Army assumed that a college educated man made a natural leader and "Harvard Eddie" was made Captain of Company H, 307th Infantry Regiment, 77th Division of the American Expeditionary Forces. After a period of training on Long Island with his men, Grant sailed for France in the summer of 1918.

The American Army was eager to prove itself to their Allies, France and Britain and the Meuse-Argonne Offensive was its chance. Launched on October 2nd, 1918, the Battle of the Argonne was one of the fiercest fights in American military history. The 77th Division charged into the Argonne Forest and strait into the solidly entrenched veteran German Army. It was during the confusing first day of the battle that Major Whittlesey, a New York attorney, got isolated and pinned down deep within the dense forest. Although forever known as "The Lost Battalion", Whittlesey knew exactly where he and his men were, it was just that no one else in the U.S. Army did. After a few anxious days, American aviators braved the dense German anti-aircraft fire and finally located Whittlesey and his battalion. Pilot Lieutenant Harold Goettler and his observer Lieutenant Erwin Bleckley volunteered to circle the forest with the idea that the place that did not fire back at them would be the the location of the lost battalion. They were right and after taking heavy fire which mortally wounded both men, their DH-4 aircraft crashed just short of the French lines. The French soldiers rushed forward to help the downed aviators. Goettler was already dead but Bleckley, with his last dying breath pressed a bloody note into the hands of the closest French soldier. On it was a map showing the location of Whittlesey and his men! With this new information, Captain Eddie Grant and Company H was among the units rushed into the Argonne to rescue the Lost Battalion.

By the morning of October 5th, Eddie Grant and his men had been on the front line and in the thick of the fighting for 4 days. No one, most of all Captain Grant, had had any time for sleep. Being awake and constantly under enemy fire for 4 days must have been a terrible feeling. Add on top of that the responsibility for the lives of the 150 men of his company and you can imagine the stress Grant must have been under. Taken out of the line that day for rest, a fellow officer described the captain as barely able to lift his arm to bring a cup of much needed coffee to his lips. But his company's reprieve was short-lived. The Lost Battalion had been found. When orders to move-out came, Grant got to his feet and took his place at the head of his Company. He led them right back into the Argonne.

The Germans threw everything they had at the Americans rushing into the forest. If Whittlesey and his dwindling men could be captured or killed it would be a devastating blow to the upstart fresh Americans as well as their weary Allies. The story of the Lost Battalion had made newspapers all over the globe and its rescue would come as a giant shot in the arm to the young nation eager to prove itself to the world in the greatest war mankind had ever known. As the 307th Regiment marched forward the German artillery pounded the road leading into the forest. Men and horses were torn to bits by the constant exploding shells but still Captain Grant and the American Army moved forward through the hail of shrapnel.

Among the wounded being brought back past the advancing infantrymen was Major Jay, commander of Grant's battalion. Recognizing Eddie he waved him over. All the other ranking officers were either dead or wounded. Harvard Eddie was now in charge of the battalion.

Though it didn't seem possible, the shelling increased. The Germans knew they had to destroy the Americans before they reached Whittlesey. The whole road had become a deathtrap but everyone knew they had to move forward. Grant called his officers together to brief them on the situation. At that moment a shell exploded, tearing apart the two young lieutenants standing next to Eddie. Grant tried yelling over the screams and explosions for a stretcher bearer. Signaling his men to take cover and waving his arms wildly in desperation for medics that never came, the next shell exploded directly on top of Harvard Eddie. He died instantly.

New York sports writer Damon Runyon was a war correspondent in France during war and had known Eddie Grant well during his time with the Giants. He wrote a stirring eulogy for the former third baseman entitled "Eddie Grant Sleeps In The Argonne Forest". The story was reprinted widely including in the 1919 Spalding Guide and Grant, the only major leaguer killed in the war, gained posthumous fame. In 1921 the New York Giants dedicated a plaque commemorating the former infielder and bench coach in front of which a wreath was placed each Memorial Day in a solemn ceremony started by his old friend, John McGraw. That plaque was famously stolen after the last Giants game at the Polo Grounds in 1957. Historians searched in vain for the plaque or any trace of who the scumbag was who stole it but it wasn't until 1999 that a couple moving into their new Hohokus, New Jersey home discovered a plaque wrapped in a blanket hidden in the attic. Turns out the home was formerly owned by a New York City cop named Gaetano Bucca. Officer Bucca, whose police beat in 1957 included the neighborhood surrounding the Polo Grounds, had apparently stolen the memorial. But baseball historians aren't positive the plaque is the real one stolen from the Polo Grounds. The San Francisco Giants for their part didn't seem to care as they try to distance themselves from their former life in Manhattan. First World War historians did however finally get the team to install a replacement in the new ballpark a few years ago. You can see it near the Lefty O'Doul entrance, but in this day and age of so many "heroes", this modest memorial to a fallen soldier who gave his life for his country just doesn't seem to be enough.

Dedicated to Captain Eddie Grant and every other serviceman and servicewoman who gave their life so I may live free in this great country of ours. Thank You.

95. Buck Lai: The Celestial Speed Demon

2011-10-31T12:33:00.000-07:00

If you've been reading my stories for a while, you'd already know that before the 1950's, the best ballplayers weren't all in the major leagues. The Negro Leagues had their stars as did the Cuban and Puerto Rican leagues. Here in the States we had a thriving semi-pro circuit and that is where guys like Buck Lai plied their trade on Saturday and Sunday afternoons throughout the 1920's...

Three times Buck Lai came perilously close to becoming the first Asian-American to play Major League ball. The first time was 1915 when the Chicago White Sox invited Lai, then known as Lai Tin, to join the team for spring training. Sox manager Nixey Callahan had seen Lai play ball when he toured with the Chinese University Nine. The team was made up of students from the University of Hawaii and each summer toured extensively throughout the states. The son of Chinese immigrants and a native of Hawaii, Lai was a star athlete back in Honolulu not only in baseball but he held the high school record for the 100 yard dash and running broad jump. Though newspapers reported his expected presence at Chicago’s camp that spring, Callahan was sacked as manager and apparently so was Lai’s direct link to the the Sox.

By 1916 Buck had married a Brooklyn girl named Isabel and was living in Audubon, N.J. While working as an inspector for the Pennsylvania Railroad he played semi-pro ball against top-notch Negro League teams and other touring ball clubs, continuing to make a name for himself in the press becoming known by the nickname "Speed Demon". Two years later the Philadelphia Phillies came knocking and after a tryout was signed to their farm club in Bridgeport, Connecticut. His first year there he batted a respectable .293 and along with Chinese-American teammate Andy Yim, was a favorite of the Bridgeport Americans’ fans. According to newspaper accounts the two “Celestials” sometimes serenaded the crowd, Buck belting out the hits accompanied by Yim on ukulele.

The next year he suffered an injury to his hand which dogged him for the rest of his life and effectively ended his hopes of making the big leagues. Lai played a total of 4 seasons with Bridgeport and batted around .260, about average for the league.

Still keeping his day job, Buck joined the Brooklyn Bushwicks, a major league-quality semi-pro team and was their starting third baseman for more than 10 years. The Bushwicks played 4 games a week and often out-drew the Dodgers in attendance. Besides Buck the Bushwicks boasted quite a few former and future major league players and they played against the best teams in outsider baseball.

Baseball researcher Scott Simkus reviewed 248 Bushwick box scores for games played against top-tier Negro League competition and found Buck hit an astonishing .297! He then compared that record with another contemporary third baseman, Negro Leaguer and Hall of Famer Judy Johnson who hit .295 against the same teams as Buck. Since the Bushwicks were very well-known around the New York area, it was just a matter of time before John McGraw of the New York Giants came calling.

In the spring of 1928, 33 year-old Buck Lai travelled to Augusta, Georgia to join the Giants. Though Buck played third his whole career, New York already had the best third-sacker in the league, Freddie Lindstrom. Buck was offered the chance to win the job at second base but failed to make the cut. Newspaper accounts reported that while Buck was not the best fielder, he more than compensated with his base running, batting and all-around smart sense of the game. Despite all this the Giants thought he was too small to last a season in the majors. Reluctantly Buck agreed to join the Giants top farm club. Lai played 4 games for the Jersey City Skeeters before calling it quits and rejoining the Bushwicks.

In the mid-1930’s Buck formed his own travelling team called the All-Hawaiian Nine featuring the best players of Chinese, Japanese and Hawaiian decent. As the they toured the U.S. showcasing the skills of Asian-Americans, a few of his players were offered tryouts by pro ball clubs. Taking after his Pop, Buck’s teenage son, Lai Jr., joined the All-Hawaiians as well. By 1939 Buck had retired from playing ball and resettled back in Audubon, N.J. While working at a ship building company, Buck stayed active in the game by managing a few semi-pro teams in the Camden area and scouting for the Dodgers. With a lifetime of brilliant outsider baseball behind him, Buck Lai passed away in March, 1978 at the age of 83.

94. Sam "Mayday" Malone: Cheers to a TV Icon

2011-10-24T15:56:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I finally got around to drawing a card for "Cheers" bartender Sam Malone. Ted Danson's beloved character on the long-running tv show was at one time a relief pitcher for the Boston Red Sox and his former pitching coach named, well, "Coach" was an employee behind the bar in the shows early years. Although I wasn't a particularly devoted fan of the show when it was on, I have always wondered what a "Mayday" Malone baseball card would look like. After a few hours of work at the drawing table I had my answer, but, like I said, Cheers wasn't my favorite show (I was more of a "Rockford Files" kind of guy) so I decided to ask for help with this week's post. Enter Tom Zappala. Tom, besides being a Red Sox fan, is also author of a book - "The T206 Collection - The Players and Their Stories" - of which I own a well-used copy. Tom and his co-authors wrote a nice biography of each and every player featured in the famous T206 tobacco card set and for a fan interested in baseball at the turn-of-the-century, this book is a must-have. So not only was I happy to get some time off from researching a story, but I got to meet the author of a book I particularly enjoy. So with out further chit-chat, I'll let Tom tell you about Sam "Mayday" Malone...

If Sam “Mayday” Malone paid as much attention to honing his pitching skills as he did to booze and beautiful women, he would have gone down in Red Sox annals as one of the greatest relief pitchers in the history of that organization.

One of the most colorful characters to ever don the Red Sox uniform, Sam was drafted as a “bonus baby” in 1966 right out of Sudbury High. Known for his “slider of death” as well as his nasty curve ball, Malone at 6 feet 3 inches tall was a can’t miss prospect. However, he languished in the minors for six years because of poor pitch command and poor judgment outside of the lines.

In 1971 Malone finally put together a decent season in the minors, going 7-2 as a reliever, while being mentored by Pawtucket Red Sox pitching coach Ernie Pantusso. As a result, Malone was finally called up to the big dance in 1972. In his first MLB appearance, he hit the two first batters he faced and then proceeded to strike out the next three.

Over the next six years “Mayday” showed flashes of brilliance, but became a gate attraction because of his off-field antics. The nickname was given to him because one never knew when disaster would strike while Sam was on the mound. A key member of the American League Pennant winning team in 1975, Malone walked over to the Boston Beer Factory in uniform after the clincher, jumped over the bar and became the unofficial bartender for the remainder of the night. Unfortunately, he drank more beer than he served, and was suspended from the playoffs.

For the next few seasons Sam Malone toiled for the Sox. He was released in 1978 after he gave up 4 consecutive home runs in a game and walked off the field while tipping his hat to the crowd that was actually cheering for him, because they had never seen anything like that before!

Malone eventually addressed his drinking, successfully completing a rehab program, and today, although a green tea drinker, is a very successful tavern owner in Boston. Not only does he accommodate patrons and fans with pictures and stories about his MLB days, but he is also one of the most charitable sports personalities in Boston. “Mayday” Malone has raised thousands of dollars for children's charities and elderly causes throughout the city of Boston. His “Mayday Charity Baseball Game” held the first Saturday in May at Fenway draws thousands. Today he is a beloved Boston hero, and his antics during his playing days simply add to his renown.

Tom Zappala is a businessman in the Greater Boston area who has a passion for anything related to baseball history. He has had a particular interest in the T206 collection for about 20 years, focusing on player profiles and backgrounds, and enjoys the hunt for new and exciting information on the lesser-known players. He is also the cohost of a popular talk radio show broadcast in northern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire. He loves his wife, his four great kids, and his Red Sox. Those things, along with a Grey Goose martini and two baseball-size olives, make life great.

93. Jim Thorpe: A Minor Oversight

2011-10-14T16:36:00.000-07:00

Back in 1983 I was in my 8th grade English class when this kid named Brian sitting next to me dropped a copy of Sports Illustrated which he was secretly reading and was cleverly hidden in his textbook. The magazine hit the wooden floor, gathered air beneath its spread-out pages, accelerated and shot across the aisle, coming to a halt under my chair. The teacher was this tall, mustachioed thug who liked slapping us kids around for minor infractions, so I quickly snapped up the magazine so that Brian didn't get caught. I didn't particularly care for Brian, but that teacher was a full-blown dangerous psychotic and it was an unwritten rule that while in his class us kids all looked out for one another. I slipped the magazine in my desk and that sick teacher never noticed. Not only did I save Brian from a beating, but I discovered Jim Thorpe that day. The main article was on the International Olympic Committee giving the long-deceased Thorpe's 2 gold medals back to his children. Jim Thorpe, the greatest athlete of the 20th Century, I learned, forfeited his gold because he played two seasons of baseball in the minor leagues...

After excelling in every sport the Carlisle Indian Industrial School had to offer - football, track, baseball and even lacrosse, Jim Thorpe jumped at the chance to make a few bucks playing low-level minor league baseball in North Carolina. A few of his schoolmates had already accepted offers to play down south and in the spring of 1909 he joined his former Carlisle teammates Joe Libby and Jesse Longdeer on the Rocky Mount Railroaders of the Class-D Eastern Carolina League. Making about $15 a game, Thorpe played most positions in the infield and outfield but mostly was utilized as a pitcher. Rocky Mount was the worst team in the league that year and Thorpe registered a 9-10 record at the season's end, but upon a closer look he didn't have as mediocre a season as it appears. 6'-1" and powerful, Thorpe was raw and sometimes wild but had a few good games including 2 shutouts. In August before a home crowd "The Big Chief" as he was called, pitched both ends of a doubleheader against the Goldsboro Giants, dropping the first but winning the second game.

Rocky Mount was a town that had no love for people of color, even if they played on the towns own baseball team. "Coloreds" (which apparently included Native Americans) were expected to stay out of the downtown area and use a "colored road" outside of town to go from one part of town to the other. Thorpe and his two Carlisle teammates, Joe Libby and Jesse Longdeer, discovered this the hard way when they cut through town on their way to the ball field and were set upon by a local cop. When the officer shoved Thorpe he promptly knocked him out cold. The three ballplayers spent the night in jail and Libby and Longdeer left the team short there after.

Away from the discipline of the Carlisle Indian School, Thorpe seems to have cut loose during the season and he had a few additional scrapes with the law due to alcohol. One story has him wandering drunk downtown and smashing his head through a store window on a $5 bet. Another night he and teammate Marvin O’Gara went at each other in a drunken brawl and Thorpe had to be physically cuffed and dragged to the police station by a team of cops. O’Gara wound up being arrested as well after he was apprehended antagonizing Thorpe through the bars of his cell window.

Thorpe reported to Rocky Mount the next season and during spring training injured his arm. The Railroaders made another poor showing in 1910 but Thorpe's pitching kept the team competitors. Although he wound up with a 10-10 record, 5 of those loses were by a single run. The Rocky Mount team eventually traded Thorpe to the Fayetteville Highlanders near the end of the season. In his only game on the mound for the Highlanders Thorpe was unimpressive and got the loss. Manager Charlie Clancy decided to move the big fellow over to first base and his batting started to get a little better by the time the season ended. Unfortunately Thorpe didn't get along with Charlie Clancy, probably because of his thirst for the nightlife. His propensity towards alcohol fueled mischief followed him to Fayetteville and one time an inebriated Thorpe fought off 5 police officers before smashing his head through another window. Still refusing to submit to the law, the police called in the president of the Fayetteville team to try to calm him down, all to no avail. Finally an officer lassoed Thorpe, tied up the big man and subdued him with chloroform him until he was docile enough to be taken to a hospital.

By all reports he showed promise as a pitcher but needed a lot of coaching, both on the field and off. At the plate he hovered around .250 and had trouble with curve balls, something that would haunt him throughout his baseball career. On the base paths he was pretty fast and stole 11 bases in 1910. For unknown reasons Thorpe didn't return to Fayetteville the following season but concentrated on amateur track and field events. Technically, Thorpe forfeited his eligibility to compete because he accepted money to play baseball.

In 1912 as a member of the United States Olympic Team, Thorpe won 2 gold medals and was declared by the King of Sweden to be the world's greatest athlete. A hero upon his arrival back in the states, Thorpe's new-found fame quickly turned dark fast. Almost at once rumors started to swirl about him playing professional baseball somewhere down south - a no-no if you want to be eligible for the Olympics. While many college athletes played sports for money and kept their eligibility, Thorpe neglected to do what they all had done: use a false name. It wasn't hard to find records pertaining to Thorpe's 2 years in the Eastern Carolina League and there was one guy in particular who helped make sure the story had legs.

Fayetteville manager Charlie Clancy seems to have gone out of his way to make the story of Thorpe's baseball career known. Not only did he volunteer the story to a local reporter, he sweetened the pot with a few seamy stories about the Olympian's taste for the nightlife and even called him "yellow" on the mound because he claimed he would develop a sore arm after 7 innings and would magically be fine the next day. The story was picked up in a few newspapers and that, coupled with an anonymous teammate ratting him out to another newspaper effectively sealed Thorpe's fate. He came clean about playing in North Carolina but claimed he did not know it was against the Olympic rules. Charlie Clancy, for what it's worth, backtracked and tried to redact his story but the dam had burst. His 2 gold medals were swiftly taken away from him.

Jim Thorpe went on to become a household name during the teens and twenties as he played professional baseball with the Giants, Reds and Braves from 1913 to 1919 as well as what passed for pro-football with the Canton Bulldogs, Cleveland Indians, New York Football Giants and Chicago Cardinals. After his athletic career ebbed he struggled to hold a job, the boozing he started in his minor league days finally developing into alcoholism. He died almost penniless in 1953 at the age of 64.

In January of 1983 the International Olympic Committee officially gave Jim Thorpe's 2 children his gold medals back.

I had been wanting to do a Jim Thorpe card for quite a while but it took me a while to gather enough info on that part of his life. 2 books that were really helpful were Kate Buford's "Native American Son" and William Cook's "Jim Thorpe: A Biography." For a much more in depth look at the pre-Olympic baseball career of Jim Thorpe, please go to Brian McKenna's classy and well-researched Baseball History Blog. Don't just stop at the Thorpe article, there are a whole lot of other nice pieces by Brian on there that are very interesting.

92. John Gedsudski: All Hail The Chief

2011-10-10T18:15:00.000-07:00

Unlike most of the other fathers in their neighborhood out on Staten Island, John Gedsudski's pop pushed his boy to go farther than just high school. Tadeusz Gedsudski valued a good education and his boy was going to be a college man, and God willing, a lawyer or doctor. Mr. Gedsudski and his wife Zofia were from the old country and fully grasped the opportunity their new country offered not just to them, but to their only son. As far as those two were concerned, the sky was the limit for young Johnny.

Although stocky and but 5'-4" tall, John Gedsudski was a star athlete at Curtis High School, lettering in 3 sports (basketball, football and baseball). Clever with his hands as well as mind, as a Boy Scout he made the coveted Eagle rank in what was at the time a record three years and in school led the debate team to the state finals. His play on the gridiron induced New York University to offer Gedsudski a scholarship and he easily made the varsity squad his freshman year. Besides a full academic schedule (Gedsudski now had the ambition of becoming a lawyer) he supplemented his income by working for a youth program called "The Comanche Club" designed to keep young city kids out of trouble in their spare time. It was his role as leader of his Comanche Club group that he became known as "Chief", a moniker he initially shied away from, but over time it stuck fast, ultimately usurping John as his first name for the rest of his life.

In 1926 "The Chief" just missed being named to the College Football All-American team when he was beat out (by a single vote) by Lloyd Yoder of Carnegie Tech. On the diamond he held down first base for N.Y.U. batting .389 in his first year and .453 his sophomore year. More over, Gedsudski finished both seasons without a single error, the first time it had been done by a N.Y.U. player.

Of course it was only a matter of time before John McGraw of the New York Giants got wind of the stocky young first baseman. In the late spring of 1926 Gedsudski received a hand written note most cordially inviting him to try out for the New York Giants' baseball club at the Polo Grounds.

On the morning of May 23rd, 1926, Chief Gedsudski made the trek up to Harlem and knocked on the clubhouse door at the Polo Grounds. Traveling secretary Jim Tierney showed the young man around the clubhouse and outfitted him in a well-used Giants road uniform before accompanying him onto the field to be introduced to John McGraw.

The Giants in 1926 were a team in transition, some of the older stars who made the team world champions at the beginning of the decade were being replaced or retired and the team now was about half fresh talent handpicked by the Giants' savvy manager. Older first baseman Highpockets Kelly was being moved to second to make room for the rookie phenom Bill Terry, and The Chief, knowing how highly acclaimed Terry was, knew he had a slim chance of replacing him at his natural position.

Tierney and Gedsudski walked across the outfield grass towards the Giants dugout. Deep inside the shaded recess McGraw was studying a newspaper which, upon approach was revealed to be a racing form. A tall, thin man, too old to be a player so probably a coach, stood next to him. "Mr. McGraw, this is John Gedsudski" said Tierney. The stubby looking McGraw looked up slowly and squinted at the two men and suddenly a flash of recognition washed over him and he enthusiastically responded "yes, yes, of course, the N.Y.U. first baseman. Glad you could make it, son."

Far from being the angry, imposing man the newspapers all wrote about, Gedsudski later said that McGraw emanated a sort of casual regality, a powerful man comfortable with his position and secure in the knowledge that he need not lord it over anyone. In this split second between McGraw's greeting and Gedsudski's response, The Chief made a fateful decision - knowing Bill Terry had first base all but tied up, he mentally scanned the Giants line up and noted the weakest spot. The Chief shook McGraw's hand and said: "Pleasure to meet you Mr. McGraw, I am also a left fielder."

McGraw's eyes widened a bit. He turned slightly and nodded to the tall, thin coach who made a note on a folded piece of paper. The Giants starting left fielder was Irish Meusel, a 10-year veteran who was as of late fast showing his age in the Polo Grounds' vast left field. Although his average hovered around .280, his days were clearly numbered. McGraw nodded his square head at the tall, thin coach, and then: "Good. Take a bat and let me see you swing in the cage."

Gedsudski grabbed one of the bats spread out in front of the dugout (one of Frankie Frisch's The Chief later said) and followed McGraw and the tall, thin coach to the batting cage. Without a word, using his beefy hands to communicate, McGraw pulled Ross Youngs out of the box and directed Gesudski to the plate. He swung a few times to limber up and then faced the pitcher. The first pitch was a fastball which he promptly lined into left field. The next pitch was knocked into left center just behind the where the shortstop would be and the next 2 pitches The Chief pounded into the upper deck. Initially nervous, Gedsudski now swung free and easy, peppering the field with his hits. When he swung a missed a few, he remained unshaken and followed those rare misses with towering shots that fell into far-away grandstands.

He was in such a natural groove that it took the pitcher to straiten up and stop throwing for The Chief to realize McGraw had called a halt to the pitching exhibition. The manager talked with the tall, thin coach who finally called out to Gedsudski to grab his glove and go out to left field.

Being a first baseman, Gedsudski of course only had a first baseman's mitt with him. Designed to take throws from the infield, the design of a first baseman's mitt was decidedly different than the type an outfielder would use. Armed with the wrong equipment, The Chief jogged out to left field and stationed himself in front of the blue Arrow Collars sign.

John McGraw himself lumbered out to the plate and hit screaming liners out to Gedsudski whose 5'-4" stocky body struggled to field. Solidly built for a first baseman, he was just not properly constructed to roam the Polo Grounds' cavernous left field. His first baseman's mitt also hampered him as he tried to make running catches - the ball popped out time after time. After about a dozen or so missed opportunities, The Chief could see McGraw stop and look intently at him. After a long moment he waved the tall, thin coach over who shrugged his shoulders and walked slowly back behind the batting cage. McGraw grabbed another baseball and hit a high pop-up to shallow left, just behind the infield dirt. Gedsudski ran his fastest but the ball dropped about a foot in front of him. By the time he recovered and looked towards the plate, McGraw was walking back to the dugout and the tall thin coach was walking out towards him, crossing something out on that folded piece of paper.

It was a long ride back downtown from the Polo Grounds, but The Chief was undaunted. He may have failed his tryout with the mighty New York Giants but he truly was more interested in getting accepted into N.Y.U.'s law school next fall. Sports were fun and rewarding, but more than that they were a vehicle with which he could use to obtain a higher profession in life. Where as his father could hope to do no better than his job as a cutter in the garment industry, The Chief had the goal of becoming a prosecutor for the City of New York. Two months after his tryout with the Giants he was formally accepted into New York University School of Law.

With the need to earn money to support himself while in law school, Gedsudski took a larger role in the Comanche Club's activities. One of the few club leaders who held a driver's license, Gedsudski worked extra hours driving the organizations' converted school bus. The Chief poured himself into his leadership role and taught his boys how to play football, baseball, box and build fires (not actually lawful in Central Park, but Gedsudski was an expert at putting out fires as well as starting them). The first aid expertize the Chief displayed when mending a wounded Comanche coupled with his unwavering honesty in umpiring their sporting events earned the unbending respect of a whole generation of grammar school street toughs. When the sun was too hot or the rain too hard, The Chief would gather his boys around inside the converted bus and tell stories to pass the time. Some, told in his shy, modest way, recalled his past stardom on the football field and the Comanche's never tired of hearing about his brush with the great John McGraw. But it was the fictional stories, told in serialized form, which The Chief made up out of thin air that really fascinated the boys. Some were so good his Comanche's actually wished for a rainy day in order to hear the next installment. One, which he called "The Laughing Man" featured a hideously mutilated superhero accompanied by a wolf, a giant, a dwarf and a strikingly beautiful half European-half Asian girl who spent their time fighting evil Chinese bandits.

Even with his law studies and Comanche Club duties, Gedsudski found the time to fall in love. Mary Hudson was a fellow law student and though both were from very different backgrounds (her family was the Connecticut Hudsons, her grandfather was Pierce Hudson III, founder of the New York and Northeastern Railroad), the two hit it off on an intellectual level. When Mary showed up at a Comanche Club baseball game and playfully demanded a place on one of the teams, her surprise prowess with the bat and speed on the bases not only won over the boys but made The Chief love her even more. Then, as so often happens, Mary and The Chief found themselves in a bit of trouble - Mary was pregnant.

The Hudson's, already biting their tongue at Mary's relationship with the son of recent immigrants who they deemed to be below their daughter's station, now brimmed over with anger and resentment. The contemporary plan of action called for Mary to be sent on an extended vacation (say 6 months in a secluded Swiss resort for women), returning perhaps a few pounds heavier but sans an embarrassing baby and her suitor to be rebuffed and sometimes paid to walk away.

The Chief had other plans.

After many heart filled and some downright inflammatory conversations with Mary, The Chief made the decision to leave law school and take a job beside his father in the garment factory. It wasn't high wages, but it would be enough to raise a family on. They would be married as soon as possible so as to avoid unpleasant rumors. The Chief pledged his love to Mary. One afternoon the boys in the Comanche Club, watching from a far, even saw him get down on one knee before her.

In May of 1928 Mary went to Switzerland and John finished law school.

Upon graduation, The Chief took a position with a small but respectable firm on Long Island that specialized in immigration law. Sometime around 1934 or so, The Chief boarded a train to Jersey City where he waited patiently on the dock for a small boy recently arrived from overseas on the S.S. Bremen. Carrying a Swiss passport, the stocky 6 year-old was quickly processed through Ellis Island and was deposited on the New Jersey shore. The Chief, his tongue twisted like a pretzel trying to speak hastily-learned French, welcomed his son home. On the long train ride back to Long Island, The Chief entertained the boy with the first installment of a new fictional story.

His son, chin resting on his knee, listened intently.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks to J.D. Salinger.

91. Bullet Benson: A Cup of Coffee with the Senators

2011-09-28T12:45:00.001-07:00

From the beginning, the best unplanned benefit I get out of this website is the new people I meet through it. Since the origins of this site stemmed from the sudden death of my Pop and my lack of having anyone to share those stories of obscure baseball players with anymore, the amount of baseball history fans I've met in the past year and a half has just been staggering. Through many of them, I've learned about players that I've never heard of before, which is always a welcome thing. About 2 weeks ago Mark Hornbaker emailed me about a pitcher for the old Washington Senators, Allen "Bullet Ben" Benson. Mark had researched and wrote an article about Bullet Ben and once he gave me a brief description of why this fella was interesting, I knew he had to have his own card and story. Fingers crossed, I invited Mark, a writer by trade, to be the newest guest author here at the The Infinite Baseball Card Set...

A few weeks ago I visited Gary Cieradkowski’s website for the first time. I was extremely impressed with Gary’s baseball stories and his custom baseball cards. I could tell right away Gary and I had something in common. We both like to share stories about ball players most people have forgotten.
I sent Gary an e-mail and told him about a story I just wrote for MASNsports.com, titled Bullet Ben's cup of coffee with the Washington Senators. After Gary read the story he contacted me to tell me he really enjoyed the story. Gary also wanted to know if I would share Bullet Ben’s story with his readers and he would create a custom baseball card of Bullet Ben. It didn’t take me long to reply back to Gary and tell him yes, I would like to share the story with your readers...

Since April 2007, I've been writing stories mostly about Washington D.C. baseball history at Nationals Daily News. A lot of my stories are based off of a date in time in D.C. baseball history. Today's story is about a pitcher, Allen "Bullet Ben" Benson, who made his Washington Senators debut this week in 1934.

What makes this story so different than any of my other stories is the way I learned about Benson. It happened a little less than two years ago when I received an e-mail from a person who wrote the following message to me:

"Mark, I have spent the last 20 years of my life trying to find more information out about my grandfather's career. He played with the Senators in 1934; he got a call up in August of that year, and pitched in two games. His name is Allen "Bullet Ben" Benson. Do you have any info on this subject??"

The person who sent me the message did not give me their name, only an e-mail address. Name or not, I was happy Benson's grandson took the time to reach me. I like to put on my detective hat on whenever I get the chance. After reading his question, I wasted no time in researching Benson's baseball past.

First, I looked his name up at baseball-reference.com. Even though there wasn't much more than the basic player profile there, I did see something that caught my eye. Allen Benson made his major league debut with the Washington Senators on August 19, 1934 and played in his last major league game one week later on August 26. Benson's grandson was right, his grandfather only played in only two games with the Senators. Not much of a story, if you are only interested in big names and big historical events.

For some reason, I kept on searching for more information about this player with the cool "Bullet Ben" nickname. I am glad I did because a half-hour later I found a Web site that listed major league players who were born in South Dakota. It was at this site I found a great deal of information about Benson's baseball career. Below is what was written about him:

"Allen Wilbert Benson was born in Hurley (Turner County), SD, on March 28, 1905 (prior to 2009, his birth date was listed incorrectly as July 12, 1908). He lived there his whole life.

"As a young man, Allen played amateur ball in and around Hurley. He also played with a Sioux City Stockyards team and professionally in the Texas League. In 1925 he was in one game for Waco and, in 1927, he pitched 5 games for Dallas (2-1, 2.74). It was also reported in "The Sporting News" that he appeared in games that year for Waterloo, IA.

"Benson's 1928 season was at Akron of the Central League where he appeared in 14 games with a 4-10 record and a 3.57 ERA. He started out with them again in 1929 (35 games, 12-7, 4.67) and then went to the Minneapolis Millers with whom he was in 3 games (16 innings) with a 0-1 record and an 8.44 ERA. In 1929 he returned to his preferred life on the ranch in South Dakota. "TSN" also reported that he had played in Charlerol, Des Moines, Wilkes-Barre and the House of David for three years.

"In a "TSN" article in August 1934, it was reported that he had to return to baseball because making a living on his land became very difficult under conditions during the Depression. In the summer of 1934 he was with The House of David team (beard and all) and was signed by Washington after the manager of Albany, Joe Cambria, saw him pitch an exhibition in Baltimore. [Benson told the team that he also had an 18-5 record for the amateur team - the Benton Harbor Tourists.] Cambria set up a try out for him where he pitched against the Senators' regular players. Washington management decided that he had sufficient speed, a good curve ball and change up to be inked to a contract.

"He first started a major league game on August 19, for the seventh place Joe Cronin led team and lasted until the 8th inning when he was removed with a blistered finger. When he arrived with the team, he continued to have facial hair. There were reports of his Senators' teammates being upset with his whiskers because they found 'the addition to their ranks of a sideshow curiosity as belittling their profession and take the view this pan should be operated on by a barber if he really is a pitcher and not merely a clown.' Senators' management said he could keep the whiskers, fans were sharply divided and Benson himself was said to be 'undecided ... but seemed inclined to favor retention...'

"Jaded members of the press charged that the signing of Allen was actually as a box office attraction similar to team owner Clark Griffith's employing characters such as Germany Schaefer, Nick Altrock, Al Schacht and Art Shires.

"In two starts that year, Benson pitched 9 2/3 innings and allowed 19 hits, 5 walks and struck out 4 for a 0-1 record with a 12.10 ERA. His son, Donald, wrote in 2004 that all he mentioned about his days with the Senators was 'I was in the major leagues just long enough to have a cup of coffee.' After his less then great pitching performance for the Senators, the beard was shaved.

"His nickname during his baseball years was "Bullet Ben" and in 1935 he made 2 stops to complete his pro career - at Albany of the International League (1-2) and Harrisburg of the New York-Penn league (8-9, 3.07).

After baseball, Allen returned to the Hurley area to farm and 'feed cattle' for more than 50 years. He died on Nov. 16, 1999."

I was very pleased with my findings, so I sent the information to Benson's very grateful grandson. Since that time, I read a very interesting ESPN story, "The Greatest Moments in Baseball Hair History" that was written by Paul Lukas in April 2008. In the story Lukas notes, "1934: Minor league journeyman Allen Benson gets a cup of coffee in the majors, appearing in two games with the Washington Senators. He sports a full beard, making him the first bearded big leaguer in 50 years - and the last one for nearly 40 more". I personally was pleased to find out Benson's cup of coffee with the Washington Senators was truly a little piece of baseball history.

Mark Hornbaker grew up in Darnestown, Maryland, where he was an avid Washington Senators fan. He currently resides in Poolesville, Maryland, with his wife Linda. Mark has been writing about the Nats and the history of baseball in Washington D.C. at Nationals Daily News since April, 2007. He also shares his views on baseball in D.C. at MASNsports.com.

http://www.nationalsdailynews.com/history/

http://www.nationalsdailynews.com/columnists/?blog=mark

http://www.masnsports.com/index_nationals.php

https://www.facebook.com/groups/60009109815/

http://twitter.com/#!/ezmark

90. Alabama Pitts: Prison Yard to Ball Park

2011-09-20T11:54:00.000-07:00

The history of baseball is sprinkled with stories of redemption: Bill Rumler's comeback after being banned for throwing games, Josh Hamilton and his triumph over booze and narcotics to win the MVP award in the 2010 playoffs and of course - the infamous Alabama Pitts who went from the Sing Sing Prison yard to the professional baseball field. Also, if you are interested, on my Facebook page I just posted a card of a certain 1970's Red Sox relief pitcher named Sam "Mayday" Malone and I'm soliciting writers to come up with the story that will accompany it...

Edwin Pitts got his name "Alabama" from his mama who gave it to him to distinguish him from his Pop, also named Edwin, who was born in Georgia. Edwin Sr, an army cavalryman, died soon after Alabama's birth and although there was no longer a need for distinguishing the two, the distinctive name stuck. Growing up with a single mom in the deep south was made a little easier when she remarried and moved the family to Peoria, Illinois. Alabama soon had a step-sister he became very attached to but his mother divorced her husband, touching off a nasty custody battle ending in Pitts' sister going to live with his step-father's parents and his mother trying to kidnap the young girl. At age 15 Alabama left home, joined the U.S. Navy and served a 3 year hitch honorably. Landing in New York City with no prospects, Pitts fell in with a former shipmate and decided that robbing liquor and grocery stores was a good idea.

Now years later it was reported that Alabama Pitts' life of crime was limited to just the one bungled heist for which he was caught, a grocery store robbery committed out of drunken desperation because he was hungry and had no money for food. In actuality it seems that there was a bit more to Alabama's career as a criminal. Later reduced by his proponents to a simple $10 heist, in reality the 2 man gang netted almost 8 times that (remember, in 1928 a 5-spot could buy you a sharp looking suit). Leaving his buddy outside on the sidewalk to act as look-out, Pitts entered the Reeves Grocery Store at 113 Amsterdam Avenue and pulled a revolver on the manager, John Costello. Snatching close to $80 he ran outside where his look-out man waited with a taxi and the 2 men began their genius of a getaway. With Costello running after the getaway cab screaming, the taxi was quickly stopped a couple blocks away, Pitts and his partner were arrested and charged with armed robbery. Far from a simple $10 hold-up for food, but far from criminal masterminds, Pitts and his partner were suspected to have been behind at least 5 other similar heists. Pitts was identified as the man holding the revolver, but unable to pin the other jobs on Pitts, he went down on the single grocery store armed robbery charge and was sentenced to 8 to 16 years in Sing Sing Prison.

If Alabama had committed his crime a decade earlier his time spent confined within the stone walls of Sing Sing would have been much different. Fortunately for him the new warden, Lewis Edward Lawes, believed in rehabilitation through sports and other activities instead of the usual dank confinement. Starting in 1919 Lawes immediately got started on forming competitive baseball, football and basketball leagues made up of not only the inmates, but their guards as well. Revolutionary for the time, Lawes' plan soon began to bear fruit as the prison's disciplinary problems reduced dramatically. Instead of replicating the career path of his predecessors whose tenure at Sing Sing lasted no longer than a few years, Lewis Lawes began a 20 year term as the institution's revered warden and leader in the prison reform movement.

Warden Lawes procured the best equipment he could for his sports teams, some donated by the New York Giants and others provided by the charitable Men's Welfare League (the initials "MWL" can often be seen in Sing Sing photographs). The warden also kept his teams on their toes by bringing in all levels of competition to challenge his teams from semi-pro up to major league baseball and pro-football squads. Besides helping his men hone their skills, more importantly these exhibition games gave the prisoners something to look forward to and get excited about.

In this sports-encouraged environment, 19 year-old Alabama Pitts flourished. His gridiron skills made him starting halfback and captain of the prison's football team called the Black Sheep. The Black Sheep's coach, former Notre Dame team captain John Law, began talking him up to the New York City sportswriters he knew and before long the legend of Alabama Pitts was being created in the sporting news. Lawes often brought professional and college teams to Sing Sing to play against his Black Sheep and during a game against Columbia University their coach, Lou Little, said "I have seen him play and I can assure you he is a 1st class football player."

Besides football, Pitts made quite an impression on the baseball diamond as well. The mighty New York Yankees visited Sing Sing in September of 1933 and newspapers reported the Pitts made quite a stir with his superior fielding skills. He was batting .500 at the time Hall Of Famer Johnny Evers brought his Albany Senators team to Sing Sing to play the Black Sheep. Evers, the clubs general manager, and the owner, Joe Cambria, were immediately taken with the convict and quietly readied a contract for him upon his release.

Since Sing Sing was a mere 30 miles from Manhattan it was only a matter of time before the early mentions of the ballplayer-convict turned into a full-blown media circus. Now 1935 and deep in the Great Depression, the story of Pitts stealing money for food was something many Americans could sympathise with. Bloated exaggerations of his multi-sport talent tickled the eager imagination of those down on their luck and the legend of "Alabama" Pitts, "The Most Prominent Jailbird Athlete In America" was launched. Due to his exemplary behavior while at Sing Sing and his leadership role as team captain, Warden Lawes obtained permission to chop off 3 years from Pitts' sentence. Still behind bars in Sing Sing and with Lawes' nod of approval, Alabama Pitts signed a contract to play outfield for the Albany Senators for $200 a month. It was a story-book ending... only it wasn't.

Before he even walked out of the prison the president of the International League, to which the Senators belonged, refused to validate the contract. Albany and their parent club, the Washington Senators, appealed to the National Association of Baseball Leagues which oversaw all the minor leagues and were likewise rebuffed. The signing of the felon Edwin Pitts was "against the best interests of the game."

From a distance of three-quarters of a century, denying Pitts his shot at redemption seems cruel, however in 1935 there were a few things to take under consideration. The first reason for denying Alabama a shot at the game was strictly from a moral perspective. Pitts and the story of his crime was sugar-coated to feed to the American public, reduced from a dangerous armed robbery to a desperate bid to feed himself. At that point in time, countless Americans were starving, doing all they could to get a square meal for themselves and their families. Still, the great majority did not reduce themselves to crime to put food on the table, they put their heads down and worked as best they could. The International League was not ready to be put in the position to seemingly validate the use of force as a means to survive the hard times. If others could see that not only does crime pay, but it pays off in a $200 a month professional baseball contract and countless newspaper articles. No, the International League was not ready to take on that responsibility.

The second reason for refusing Pitts' contract was whether or not the signing of the prison-athlete was just another stunt to get publicity and improve attendance. It was, after all, the depths of the depression and baseball had endured many such cheap stunts like the signing of the teenage girl Jackie Mitchell, the Washington Senators' bearded hurler "Bullet Ben" Benson and the shameless ethnic duel between a Chinese and Japanese pitcher in the Pacific Coast League to capitalise on the recent war between the 2 nations. Such exhibitions may have temporarily boosted attendance but in the long run they ran the risk of having a serious effect on the sanctity of the game.

On June 6th, 1935 Sing Sing's iron gates opened up and into this hurricane of controversy walked Alabama Pitts, free man. The Senators had him accompany the team as an unsigned player as the press and owner Joe Cambria whooped-up the national sporting press to petition baseball to give him a chance. Albany's general manager Johnny Evers, exasperated by the controversy melodramatically threatened: "I will retire from baseball. I know this is a broad statement, but I will make good on it. I absolutely will get out of the game." Confronted by sportswriters Pitts said "this is the toughest blow of my life" as tears welled up in his eyes.

Letters flooded into newspapers and the baseball commissioners office and there were editorials on the radio talking about it. Even the victim of his botched 1930 stick-up, John Costello, voiced his support of Pitts. On June 17th Judge Landis surprisingly gave the go-ahead to the Senators - Alabama Pitts was a professional ballplayer.

There was one big clause, however: Pitts could only be used in "regular" games, meaning no exhibition games. If the Albany Senators were serious about having him on their squad, they had to play him as a regular, not a circus side-show. Johnny Evers agreed and Pitts joined the ballclub. Wearing his lucky number 7 on his back, Pitts went 2 for 5 against the Syracuse Chiefs and made a couple of nice catches in the outfield that were noted in the papers. Hailed as a triumphant debut, it went downhill from there. Alabama had the fairly-serious problem of not being able to hit the curve ball and his average plummeted. Being able to play in the numerous exhibition games the Senators played might have helped him get his batting up to speed but he was also hampered by injuries, culminating in blood poisoning from an untreated spike wound. Pitts was described by his teammates a tough character who seemingly took no notice of pain. One former teammate went so far as to reveal that Pitts didn't even wear underwear beneath his uniform, let alone a protective jock strap or sliding pads. He kept to himself but was not unfriendly and teammates remarked that he never spoke of his time behind bars. One disconcerting trait the new player possessed was the way his eyes quickly and comprehensively surveyed a room upon entering it. Senators' manager Al Mamaux called him the best defensive player on the team, but his anemic .233 average put his career on the rocks.

After the season Alabama Pitts, now known from coast-to-coast, was a superstar. The former convict was flooded with marriage proposals and business deals. The lucrative vaudeville circuit came calling, but Pitts, wanting to be taken seriously as a ballplayer, turned down the offers. He did however agree to play 4 exhibition games with the Philadelphia Eagles, but his playing time was very limited. Showing his versatility he also led a semi-pro basketball team before baseball season began again.

Telling the boys in the press to start calling him "Ed" instead of "Alabama", Pitts began the season trying to make good but AAA pitching continued to baffle him. Cambria sent him down to the single A York White Roses, a New York-Penn League team he also owned. He continued to average about .230 and complained about being used as a "circus freak." Disgruntled, Pitts moved out of the sphere of professional ball and joined the outlaw Charlotte Hornets of the Carolina League for the remainder of the 1936 season.

The Carolina League was made up of tough factory teams from the area's textile mills and became a home for exiled or aging ballplayers as well as a few talented up and comers. It was a slugger's league and high averages were the norm. No longer under close scrutiny Pitts improved his average feasting on the lesser quality pitching and returned to organized ball with the Winston-Salem Twins the following year.

His last chance at professional ball came to an end in June of 1937 when the Twins released him after 23 games. Pitts headed back to the Carolina League and joined the Gastonia Spinners and then the Valdese Textiles. Easy ballplaying and the promise of a good job in the mills encouraged Pitts to call Valdese, North Carolina his home. Working for the Pilot Hosiery Mill, Alabama married a local girl named Mary and had a daughter in 1939. Pitts took on the extra job of the local high school's baseball coach and settled in to become one of the towns regular fellows.

It was a last grasp at a baseball career that led to Alabama Pitts' untimely demise.

Playing for the Valdese Mill team, Pitts was in a seedy roadhouse celebrating with his teammates when he drunkenly tried to dance with a woman. What happened next is mired in a slurry of booze and ass-covering but 2 alternate tales emerged: the first one being that Pitts forced himself unwillingly on the girl of a local tough named Newland LaFevers and when he tried to stand up for her honor Pitts came at him with fists flying leaving LaFevers no option but to pull a knife in self-defense. The second story is the happily-lubricated Pitts, always popular with the ladies, simply tried to cut in on the dancing couple and LaFevers unexpectedly slashed Pitts. With his last breath Alabama told hospital workers that there was no fight and all he did was try to cut in on a dancing couple. Whatever the reason, the 4 inch cut from LaFevers' knife fatally opened an artery under his right arm pit and Alabama Pitts was dead at the age of 31.

As a side note, after a week-long manhunt, a judge exonerated Newland LaFevers (if you were ever to get knifed in a roadhouse, you just know it would have to be by a guy named "Newland LaFevers") for the murder of Edwin "Alabama" Pitts. LaFevers attorney was able to get witnesses to testify that it was self-defense, which directly contradicted the testimony of Pitts' teammates. 5,000 people showed up to see Alabama returned to the earth, leaving behind one heck of great and tragic story...

While doing research for this story, I came across quite a few writers who try to draw a parallel between Alabama Pitts, a criminal allowed to play professional ball, and Shoeless Joe Jackson who was forever banned from the game. These writers try to use this comparison as leverage to make the point that since Pitts was allowed into the game, Jackson should be in the Hall of Fame. I take exception to this comparison: Shoeless Joe was a dishonest ballplayer who accepted cash to facilitate the defeat of his ballclub. Whether he went through with it or not is not an issue, he accepted the money, period. Alabama Pitts was a convicted stick-up man who served his time and paid his debt to society, living the rest of his life as an honest man. Say what you want, but to me those are two radically different situations and two completely different types of men.

89. Fujio Nagasawa: Hats off to the Tokyo Giants

2011-09-11T09:16:00.000-07:00

Please excuse the lack of updated for the past 2 weeks, I have been in the process of moving from California to Kentucky and the past weeks have been filled with packing, moving and storing capped off with a severely injured back due to a freak accident when I tried to stop a file cabinet from tipping over while standing one one foot. Live and learn I suppose. Also, if you are interested, on my Facebook page I just posted a card of a certain 1970's Red Sox relief pitcher named Sam "Mayday" Malone and I'm soliciting writers to come up with the story that will accompany it...

This week's card and story is about Fujio Nagasawa and the 1935 Tokyo Giants. You can get the back story on the tour in the story I did about the team's star outfielder Jimmy Horio.

Hailing from the island of Hokkaido in the northern-most part of Japan, first baseman Fujio Nagasawa was the star of his college team from Hakodate Commercial School. After graduating he continued to play ball for the Hakodate Oceania Baseball Club. His talent was such that at the “advanced” age of 30 was recruited to represent Japan against the Major League All-Stars in the winter of 1934.

Led by Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, the All-Stars wiped the floor with the Japanese team but the Americans came away with the impression that the Japanese players they faced were at a AA level. Nagasawa himself hit .226 in 11 games against major league pitching. With practice against good, professional competition, American sportswriters speculated they would improve quickly. Major Leaguer Lefty O'Doul was on that 1934 team and had previously played on tours that stopped in Japan earlier in the decade. Through his friendships with influential businessmen eager to start a Japanese league, O'Doul suggested sending the Dai-Nippon team to the United States in the spring to play against the American professional teams that held spring training on the west coast. O'Doul was newly named manager of the San Francisco Seals and offered to act as intermediary in arranging other ball clubs to play against the Japanese.

Besides acting as middle-man for the Japanese, the publicity-savvy O'Doul made a few suggestions to the Dai-Nippons - the first of which was to change their name: The Dai-Nippon Tokyo Yakyu Club was just too much of a mouthful for the American public to digest. O'Doul suggested the "Tokyo Giants" and the name has held to this day. Other suggestions by O'Doul was for the Japanese to capitalize on national customs that would be unique to their team when they toured America. Despite the fact that Japanese baseball teams all used English words and numbers on their uniforms, for the tour jerseys would sport the player's number in traditional Japanese kanji characters on their backs and the kanji characters for "Tokyo" would appear on their sleeve. O'Doul instructed them to continue the tradition of tipping their caps and bowing as a group to the crowd before and after a game. Each batter was told to also tip their cap and bow to the umpire before each at bat and even after being thrown out on the base paths runners were to do the same. Another unique aspect of a Tokyo Giants game was their football-like huddle before each inning. Newspaper scribes in America were kept busy debating just what was being discussed during these mysterious huddles. Curious little things like that really made a difference to the American public and the team was awarded with decent-sized crowds and much newspaper publicity.

Among the photographs that accompanied the Tokyo Giants press kit was a much-reproduced photo of Fujio Nagasawa tipping his cap to the home plate umpire. American sportswriters commented favorably on his fielding skills and he batted right around .300 on the 6 month tour. The success of the tour back in Japan led to the formation of the nation’s first professional league and Nagasawa was signed to be the Tokyo Giants first baseman. As the Giants lead off hitter, Nagasawa became the very first batter in the Japanese Baseball League when play began in 1936. Now in his early 30's, Fujio Nagasawa's playing days were coming to an end and the arrival of first baseman Tetsuji Kawakami, soon to be known as "The God of Batting" led to his retirement in 1943. Nagasawa then switched gears and became a successful reporter for the Hokkaido Shimbun newspaper, dying at the age of 80 in 1985.

This card and story stems from the large file of research I have been slowly accumulating on the 1935 Tokyo Giants. Often a footnote in other baseball history books, no volume of its own has ever been published in English. In Japan, baseball writer and historian Yoichi Nagata has written the definitive study of this tour - unfortunately it is in Japanese and no translation has been done of this interesting work. Through a speech he gave at a SABR convention a few years ago, Nagata related how his research uncovered Lefty O'Doul's part in helping the Tokyo Giants create a unique persona through the continued use of the "football huddle" and the bowing and tipping of their caps. I am planning to release the drawings I have done of the 1935 team along with the story of their tour in a future edition of "21".

88. Harry Frank: Who The Heck Was Harry Frank?

2011-08-19T15:58:00.000-07:00

Who the heck was Harry Frank? That's exactly what I wanted to know. I stumbled on his name while looking at the record of the Baltimore Orioles from 1919-1925. As some of you might know, the Orioles won the International League pennant 7 years in a row causing all kinds of problems with the other league owners who cried foul. See, the Baltimore Orioles were an independent minor league team, unaffiliated with any Major League ballclub. Baltimore's owner, Jack Dunn, scouted and recruited his own players, mostly from the local Maryland and Pennsylvania countryside. While other minor league teams lost their best players at the end of the season when the big club called them up, Dunn was able to keep his best players and sell them off at his leisure. If the price wasn't good enough, didn't matter to him, they just stayed in Baltimore another year. If a Major League club shelled out the cash, then Dunn would just send his scouts out to, say, Western Maryland and bring back another Lefty Grove. Great if you were an Orioles fan, but lousy if you were in Toronto and your team was finishing second every season with no chance of usurping the Orange swarm. If the Orioles ran away with the pennant every friggin' year, why would fans in Newark, Montreal, Rochester and all the other International League cities care any more? In the end, Jack Dunn was forced to sell off his stars and bust up his dynasty for the good of the league. These transactions created the nucleus of Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics dynasty as Baltimore alumni made up a big portion of his 1929-31 pennant winning teams. Lefty Grove, Max Bishop, Joe Boley and George Earnshaw all were important cogs in the white elephant's interruption of the New York Yankees pennant-winning machine.

So back to the old Orioles. I was marvelling at the staggering records the Baltimore pitching staff racked up during those years, Grove had seasons of 25, 18, 27 and 26 wins, Rube Parnham won 28 then 33, Tommy Thomas won 32 in another, Jack Bentley not only led the I.L. in winning percentage but also led the league in batting that season as well! Those teams were just stocked with unbridled talent. And then I saw the name Harry Frank. In 1919, his first season with Baltimore, Frank was 24-6, good enough to be the team's second best after Rube Parnham who won 28 games that year. What makes it all the more impressive was that 1919 was not only Harry Frank's first season with the Orioles, it was his first season in professional baseball! While the International League wasn't the majors, it was the highest level of the minors at that time and all the other teams were stocked with both seasoned veterans and rising stars waiting for an opening spot on a major league roster. Winning more than 20 games in any league was pretty impressive, but to have a stellar record like that in his first season as a professional in the best minor league against first-class talent - well that deserved some further investigation.

To make sure it wasn't a fluke, I looked up 1920. No sophomore jinx here, Frank was 25-12!

Who the heck was Harry Frank?

The first place I looked for Harry Frank was in Fred Lieb's 1955 book "The Baltimore Orioles" where I found this: "...but a little Jewish chap, Harry Frank, playing his first season of pro-ball, was the marvel of the staff, winning 24 games out of 30." And that was it. The other go-to book when it comes to the Orioles International League days, James Bready's "Baseball In Baltimore: The First 100 Years" only mentioned that he was in fact a native Baltimorean. The sports information superhighway, www.baseball-reference.com had his minor league record but absolutely no biographical info except the name "Harry G. Frank."

So this wasn't going to be easy. Spending more time then I should have, since I was supposed to be packing up my studio for the move, I managed to piece together the short but sweet career of Harry Frank.

Harry Gilmore Frank was born on March 4, 1899 to Perry and Emma Frank. Harry was the couple's first born and was followed 6 years later by a sister, Lillie. Perry Frank was a Baltimore City police officer and Emma a homemaker at 2001 Pulaski Street in West Baltimore's Walbrook neighborhood. The Frank's shared the typically narrow Baltimore-style row house with Perry's mother, brother and sister. Although I found no traces to prove it, I can guess that the young Harry grew up playing sandlot ball for one of the many youth athletic clubs that were all over the city at the time. By 1918 Harry was employed as a clerk downtown at the Manufacturers & Traders Trust Company Bank. Although a Sporting News article from 1922 mentions Frank going strait from the sandlots to the International League, he actually played in the Baltimore Interclub League with the New Amsterdam Casualty Company team. Frank became known for his awesome control and while with New Amsterdam he once pitched 8 strait games and allowed but 1 walk. It was just a matter of time before Jack Dunn would hear of the kid and put him in Oriole pinstripes.

To say Harry Frank must have been impressive would be an understatement. The Orioles owner and manager Jack Dunn was in the final stage of assembling the juggernaut that would eventually win 7 strait pennants. With former major leaguers Rube Parnham, Socks Seibold, Ellis Johnson and Red Hill he had a pretty solid pitching staff going into the 1919 season. For a 20 year-old kid with absolutely no professional experience to be given the chance to play on such a team along side major league veterans in the best minor league in the nation, well, that speaks volumes about the natural ability Harry Frank must have possessed.

For his part, the local kid didn't disappoint.

As the Birds tore through the 1919 campaign Frank quickly emerged as Dunn's number 2 starter, right behind the eccentric but effective Rube Parnham. In the August 10th edition of The New York Times, Harry Frank was singled out for his impressive 17 win and 4 loss record to date. Box scores began to make note of his sweeping curve ball that shot outwards and pin-point control. Though his strikeout record wasn't mind-blowing, he walked less than 3 batters per 9 innings. Dunn also felt comfortable enough with the way the rookie worked in a pinch because he used him more and more for relief appearances in addition to his regular starts.

By the time the season ended, Baltimore had won the pennant by 8 games over the defending champions, Toronto. The rookie Harry Frank led the International League in games (48) and had the best winning percentage (.800). Teammates Rube Parnham led in wins (28), Otis Lawry had the best average (.364), Merwin Jacobson led in hits (203) and speedster Fritz Maisel cornered the market in doubles (44) and runs (135). And as a team, the Orioles led the league in batting, runs, doubles, triples, home runs, stolen bases... you get the idea.

With pretty much the same team in 1920, Dunn's Orioles floundered out of the gate and finished the first month of the season in 4th place. Slowly the Birds gained momentum and started climbing. By the middle of July Baltimore was unstoppable, winning 56 of the last 69 games for a princely .812 percentage. The team even tied the existing minor league record by winning 25 strait games. It seems they were helped out a little by their loyal fans who did their best to intimidate the opposing teams with bottle barrages and heckling so severe it made the national sporting pages.

Our boy Harry Frank finished up his second season in pro-ball with a 25-12 record and again led the league with 48 game appearances. Frank established himself as the team's premier relief specialist due to his control ability. Relief pitching was still in its prehistoric stages and no statistic was available for the save. Jack Dunn appears to have been one of the trendsetters when it came to sparing his pitchers when the going got bad. Pitchers were expected to throw all 9 innings and to fail in doing so was look at as a weakness as well as a sure way to not make it to the majors. The high minor leagues were littered with the shells of once promising young pitchers who threw their arms out trying to toss one too many complete games. At a time when most managers simply stuck with their starter come hell or high water, the fans in Baltimore showed their appreciation to Frank and his pioneering role by presenting the hometown boy with a gold watch and chain bearing the inscription: "Harry Frank: The King Of Relief Pitchers."

On September 23rd the New York Yankees came to town on an off day between playing the Athletics and Senators. Major League team commonly made extra money on off days by scheduling exhibition games with minor league teams and the Yankees were no exception. Besides, Babe Ruth was a Baltimore boy himself and was sure to bring in a huge amount of cash at the gate. With the bases loaded Harry Frank was put into the game in the 8th inning and struck out Baltimore's favorite son helping preserve the Orioles 1-0 win over the Yankees.

The champion Orioles were now slated to face the St. Paul Saints, winners of the American Association pennant, in the Little World Series. Baltimore won the first 3 games at Oriole Park but Frank lost the 4th game due to bad fielding and no run support. As the series moved to Minnesota, the press remarked on how the Charm City fans surprised everyone and acted civilized during the home stand. The same couldn't be said for the citizens of St. Paul. The visitors were under siege as soon as they arrived and even leaving their hotel became an ordeal as they had to run a gauntlet of rabid St. Paul rooters. Outfielder Otis Lawry narrowly missed being assaulted when he bobbed and weaved an assailants punches while trying to get to the ballpark. Tempers rose to a fever pitch as the Orioles won 3 strait games to take the title.

As for Harry Frank, it seems he was a bit cocky coming off those two great seasons, as of course he should have been. The Sporting News reported Dunn's young ace as a hold out until the manager assured Frank that the Birds would repeat again in 1921. It seems the young pitcher had grown accustomed to the fat $600 Little World Series check he received in October and wanted a pay raise to make sure he covered the spread in case they didn't repeat in '21. Dunn pushed all worries aside and made an addendum to Frank's contract that he would personally cover a $600 bonus if the team failed to make an appearance in the Little World Series. The Sporting News reported that none of their scribes had ever heard of such an unorthodox contract bonus.

On the surface, 1921 was another steamroller year for Baltimore as the team decimated the International League finishing a staggering 20 games in front of the runner up, Rochester. If one looked under the hood, however, one could see that Dunn's pennant machine was held together with wire and chewing gum. Outfielder Bill Holden bowed out with malaria. Max Bishop was crippled when he tore a ligament sliding into a base and Dunn had to bring outfielder Otis Lawry in to 2nd to cover for him. Local teenage sandlot player Jimmy Lyston filled in wherever needed, most often in the outfield. The bright spot was the pitching staff: Lefty Grove won 25 games in his first full season with the Birds and veteran Jack Ogden won 31 games. Native Baltimorean Tommy Thomas debuted by winning 24 for his hometown team and first baseman Jack Bentley not only won the league batting title with a record .412 average, he also was 12-1 on the mound and led the league with a .923 winning percentage! The Orioles were unstoppable, but what about Harry Frank?

Leading the league in games pitched for 2 years in a row finally took its toll on Frank's right arm. Plagued by injuries he managed only 13 wins against 7 losses. Although he appeared in 36 games, it was mostly as a spot reliever. The Sporting News, reporting on the Orioles woes, mentioned that Frank didn't have the same form after literally pitching his arm off in 1919 and 1920. With Bentley, Thomas and Groves holding down the pitching rotation, Dunn was able to ease up on the youngster and let him work out of the bullpen for most of the season.

In the first game of the Little World Series against the Louisville Colonels, Frank relieved a battered Lefty Grove after he gave up 5 runs in the 3rd inning. Louisville manager Joe McCarthy, taking note of Frank's full wind-up despite men on base, ordered a steal of home, showing up the pitcher on the way to an embarrassing 16-1 win. The Colonels went on to upset the heavily favored Orioles and take the 1921 title. Some whispered that a few of Baltimore's star players, unhappy at Dunn for letting them advance to a Major League club, simply dogged the series. The best shortstop in the minors, and arguably in the whole game, Joe Boley was one of the Orioles who's uneven play aroused suspicion. Boley in fact left the series early and went home to Pennsylvania.

Dunn put the disappointed post-season behind him. Announcing his plans to have Baltimore spend spring training in Winston-Salem, South Carolina, the manager specifically mentioned to The New York Times that "pitcher Harry Frank had signed his contract for next season."

Frank, just like the Orioles, roared back to life in 1922. Maybe Dunn's sparing use of the righty the previous season healed his arm, or perhaps it was his recent marriage that reinvigorated the pitcher. What ever the cause, by the end of June Harry Frank regained his form and was leading the International League in wins. Ending the season boasting a nice 22-9 record he regained his title of league leader in appearing in the most games (45). Again beating out Rochester by 10 games, the Orioles faced off with St. Paul again in the Little World Series. Versatile Jack Bentley continued the lack-luster play exhibited in the previous post-season, to the point of leaving a game instead of playing first base after being taken off the mound. Baltimore fans soured on the star and by the end of the month he was property of the New York Giants. Never-the-less, Baltimore held it together and beat St. Paul 5 games to 2.

Despite being the Orioles number 2 starter and ace fireman, Harry Frank made no appearance in the series. Newspapers make no mention of the reason, but it wouldn't be hard to guess that Frank had re-injured his arm. Of course these were the days before pitch-counts, bullpen coaches and hot-tubs. Pitchers were expected to throw whenever they were asked and playing for a high profile team like the Orioles probably made Frank less prone to complain - Dunn was starting to sell off his best players to the majors and the more ink a player got, the better his chances at being sold.

1923 found Frank working almost entirely out of the bullpen. He scattered 179 innings of work over 49 game appearances. His record was a respectable 9-2 but his ERA ballooned to 4.68, but that might be because of a spike in hitting that year. Despite his past promise, it is evident that by now Harry Frank was not going to make it to the major leagues, especially as a relief pitcher.

As the 1924 season dawned, Jack Dunn realized time was running out on his Charm City dynasty. Each year secret meetings were held by all the other team owners about what was to be done about the endless onslaught from Baltimore. Although Baltimore's attendance had been very good, even Dunn was becoming worried that his fans were getting bored of the constant winning. If he was nervous then what was the other owners going through? The major leagues as well were getting pissy about Dunn's perceived hoarding of talent. Although he let a few players like Jack Bentley, Joe Boley, Lena Styles and Max Bishop slip away to the majors, he made them pay through the nose. What's more, guys like Bentley and Boley broke into the majors well past their prime and after a few great seasons showed their age. No, Jack Dunn could see the storm clouds brewing.

Despite the looming pressure, the 1924 team charged ahead on their way to their 6th strait pennant. The pitching staff was exactly the same as the previous season, except for one: Harry Frank.

Showing the effects of his overuse, Frank managed to get into just 8 games before he was traded to the Jersey City Skeeters along with outfielder Otis Lawry. Lawry had been, along with Frank, the stars of the 1919 Orioles and he was embittered at being traded to a perennial last place team. He disappeared for a while before finally joining the Skeeters and batting .303. Jimmy Walsh had been traded to Jersey before the 1924 season and was now Jersey City's new manager and perhaps Dunn sent old hands Frank and Lawry to help out his former first baseman.

Regardless of how Frank wound up in Jersey City, the fact of the matter was that he was at the end of the line. The Skeeters finished dead last again and Harry Frank posted a 6-12 record. Handed the ball 35 times, he just didn't have the arm he used to and the pin-point control, much commented on in his hey-day, was gone - for the first time in his career Frank walked more batters than he struck out. He went back to Baltimore and never played professional ball again.

What Harry Frank did back home in 1925 is unknown, but he and his wife had a son in 1926, Harry Gilmore Frank, Jr. He surfaces briefly as an umpire in the class D Blue Ridge League in 1928 but 2 years later he is working as an accountant for the Maryland Racing Authority. This becomes Frank's second career and for the rest of his life he works as a race track auditor, first in his native Maryland, then Florida and finally New York. His son Harry Jr left Baltimore's Boy's Latin High School in 1943 to enlist in the army. Wounded in the Battle of The Bulge, Harry Jr received the Bronze Star and 59 years later his widow was awarded his an honorary Class of 1944 diploma.

Frank Sr., the old Oriole pitcher, relief pitching pioneer and Baltimorean, died in Rockville Centre, New York on November 9, 1965, age 66.

Now you know who Harry Frank was.

I just want to give a big thank-you to Jimmy Keenan for adding some great information about Harry Frank, specifically his relief pitching and the item about his being awarded the gold watch and chain by the Oriole fans. Jimmy Keenan wrote a spectacularly interesting book about his family's history with baseball in Baltimore called "The Lystons: The Story of One Baltimore Family and Our National Pastime." It's a massive book and filled with really interesting facts and anecdotes about the city's rich baseball history, but the best part is the largest portion of the book that relates his grandfather Jimmy Lyston's odyssey through all levels of semi-pro and minor league ball from the teens through the 30's. Signed by Jack Dunn off the same sandlots as Harry Frank, Jimmy Lyston played on the famous 1921 Baltimore Orioles team (and I hope Jimmy will grace us with a "guest author" story about his Grandpa here on the Infinite Baseball Card Set). Keenan is also the producer of perhaps the most in-depth and interesting documentary on a minor league team called "The Forgotten Birds" about the pre-MLB Baltimore Orioles. Thanks again Jimmy!

87. Joe Nuxhall: A portrait of The Old Left-hander as a young man

2011-08-04T00:05:00.001-07:00

Although it has absolutely nothing to do with this story, today is my birthday. I thought you'd like to know. Yeah, well, anyway...

In 1995, on a whim, I accepted a job offer and moved from Baltimore to Cincinnati, Ohio. I didn't know much about the city or its people at the time, in fact I could only list 2 things that came to mind when you mentioned the name "Cincinnati."

The first was the news headlines about the recent prosecution of the of the Contemporary Art Center curator for "pandering obscenity" when he tried to put on the Robert Mapplethorpe retrospective. In my pseudo-artistic-intellectual circle at the time, this supposed "totalitarian censorship issue" was a huge deal - but I bucked the popular opinion of my peers. Among many other "provocative" pieces in the exhibit was a portrait of the late artist with a bull whip jammed up his ass. Call me crazy, but I figured the word "obscene" fit that and many other photographs of his exhibit pretty good. Maybe I was just jaded at having gone through 4 years of an Ivy-Leaguesque art school having to watch a few "artists" trying to pass off the same "provocative" junk when they had no ideas left. I figured if it pisses off the majority of the people in a community, who are we to force them to foot part of the bill and make them exhibit it in their town if they don't want it? Hey, but what do I know. Admittedly I was never "talented" enough to come up with an idea for a photo shoot like that. I liked to paint naked chicks.

Now the second thing that came to mind when I thought of "Cincinnati" was that the first professional baseball team in history still called the city home. So I moved to Cincinnati.

What I found there both surprised and amazed me. The people were so friendly and open. I had never traveled much - to be honest, I had never even left the east coast. To have strangers strike up a conversation with you on the street was, well, perplexing. It honestly took me a good 3 months before I relaxed, knowing that the friendliness I encountered on the street was not a ruse to steal my wallet or part of some complex hustle. And boy did that city love their Reds! Until the 1990's, the first pitch of every baseball season was thrown in Cincinnati. Only after the game had begun there could the rest of the major leagues begin their season. I liked that privilege pro baseball conceded to Cincinnati in acknowledgement of their place as home to the first professional team. And the people of Cincinnati appreciated as well. I soon found that Opening Day in Cincinnati wasn't something to sniff at. Those people made a heck of an event out of it! There was a huge parade that started from the city's Findley Market and wound through downtown to the river where the ballpark stood waiting. This wasn't any old parade, mind you, but a parade made up of the folks. Every obscure social group marched, some serious but a large amount humorous. The lawn mower drill team comes to mind (if you've never experienced them, you have no idea what you are missing). Card Clubs marched. Restaurant staffs rode make-shift floats. Anyone who owned a vintage car joined in. Little Leaguers and beer league softball teams suited up in their finest and took up their place in the parade. It seemed like the whole darn city of Cincinnati was marching down Race Street! All the surrounding area's school bands march and although I'm not one for parades at all, I never missed one while living there. It's things like that that really make you feel part of the community.

Which brings me to Joe Nuxhall. To most outside the Cincinnati area, Joe was a footnote to baseball history - the youngest player ever in the major leagues. But to everyone within the signal range of the mighty WLW radio station, Joe Nuxhall, along with partner Marty Brennaman, WAS the Cincinnati Reds. Joe and Marty's enlightened banter behind the mikes really added something special to that storied franchise. Players came and went, but those two guys lent a voice to millions of Reds fans and through years of good teams and bad, gave them something to carry their heads high about. Win or lose, Cincinnati was home to the best team in radio broadcasting.

To this day I still chuckle inside when I remember Marty making fun of Joe's horrible sweater collection. Joe and Bill Cosby must have bumped into each other while frequenting the same twisted sweater emporium. And man, sometimes I'll break out in full laughter thinking about the time Joe, eyeing Marty's trademark perfectly coiffed hair, called him a "poofy-haired fancy-boy" right in the middle of a game! Jabs aside, the combination created the best play-by-play I'd ever heard. Through their voices, you knew exactly what was happening down on the field. To me that's the true sign of a great broadcaster, and Cincinnati was blessed to have not one, but two men who possessed that skill. I remember that for me, like millions of others in the Cincinnati area, whether driving home in their car or sitting with friends in the back yard, the game was not yet over until Joe concluded his post-game show, signaling its end with his trademark phrase: "this is the Old Lefthander, rounding third and headed for home - Goodnight everyone."

So anyway, the whole point of this is to introduce you to a much younger Joe Nuxhall. It's Saturday, June 10th, 1944 and the 15 year-old lefty is facing the mighty St. Louis Cardinals at Crosley Field. How the heck did this kid, just barely in his teens, find himself in this situation?

In the summer of 1943 the Cincinnati Reds, like every team in professional baseball, was hurting for talent. The draft snatched up every able-bodied man in the country. As soon as a scout would get a prospect's signature on a contract, Uncle Sam would come along and call him for his team. Ballclubs sent their scouts all over the country trying to scrape up every draft-exempt player who could hold a bat and had a head to hang a cap on. One sunny Saturday in the summer of 1943, Reds scout Eddie Ries took the trip 20 miles north of Cincinnati to Hamilton, Ohio to look at a local semi-pro pitcher named Orville "Ox" Nuxhall. The 35 year-old Ox told the desperate scout that with 5 kids and a wife to feed, he had no interest in beginning a career in professional baseball - but - his 14 year-old boy "Sonny" did. It wasn't the first time Ries heard about the boy. A friend of his, Hib Iske, was a coach up here in these parts and had been jawwing about this kid for weeks. But still, a 14 year-old? Eddie Ries hopped in his car and headed back to town.

Little did Eddie Ries know, this "kid" wasn't your average teenager. Sonny was a strapping 6' - 3" tall and a healthy 195 lbs. A bit wild, he none-the-less possessed a smoking fastball that averaged around 85 mph. And to make it a little sweeter, this giant of a boy was a lefty. He'd thrown more than a dozen no-hit games for his Knothole League team before he was 13. On Sundays Sonny and his father Ox played on the same local Muni-league adult team, sharing the the pitching duties. No, this wasn't your average teenager.

Every August the Reds held open tryouts to scoop up what ever the scouts missed. With the war taking such a toll on the organization's man-power, this free look at local talent was even more pertinent to the ballclub. Hib Iske loaded up his car with some of his home-grown talent including his star, Sonny Nuxhall. After 15 minutes of pitching batting practice, Sonny impressed Reds manager Bill McKechnie enough to send him on to the next tryout level, a game with the other hopefuls that passed the first cut. The giant teen wiffed 2 or 3 batters before Eddie Ries approached him with the words every kid dreams of hearing: "How'd you like to be a professional ballplayer?"

Although Sonny, Ox and the Reds organization were all on board with signing the kid, it was agreed to wait until that winter's high school basketball season ended. To sign a professional baseball contract would render the teen ineligible for high school sports. It was decided to just let Sonny suit up with the team and pitch batting practice whenever the Reds were home. No contract was needed for that and he could play basketball for Wilson Junior High that winter with a clear conscious. When the season concluded in January 1945, Joseph Henry Nuxhall became property of the Cincinnati Reds. The most unusual facet of the contract was Ox's clause that his boy not be sent into the team's farm system. Due to his age, Ox wanted his son close by and it was agreed that he'd stay with the big club, suiting up on weekends until school ended and pitch batting practice. Once he was out, he'd join the team as a full-fledged Cincinnati Red.

Saturday, June 10th, 1944.

Billy Southworth brought his National League Champion St. Louis Cardinals into Crosley Field. On their way to yet another pennant, the Cards had by far the best team in baseball. Although they continuously lost players to the draft, the vast farm system Branch Rickey set up continued to pump fresh talent into their club. Boasting all-stars like Stan Musial, Walker Cooper, Marty Marion and Whitey Kurowski, St. Louis was on their way to posting an amazing 105-49 league record.

3,510 fans showed up for the game. Bill Lohrman started for the Reds but he faltered in the 2nd, giving up 5 hits before he was yanked. Ed Heusser was rushed in and the Cards jumped him for 4 more hits without retiring anyone. 6 runs had scored before McKechnie threw Buck Faucett in there to turn off the bleeding. He got them out of the inning but Faucett continued to leak runs, giving up one in the 4th, one in the 5th, one in the 6th, one in the 7th and 2 more in the eighth making it 12-0 as the Reds entered the top of the 9th. Cincinnati's bats were useless that day against ace Mort Cooper who had given up only 5 hits. With no chance of pulling off a win that day against the defending National League Champs, Bill McKechnie had his teenage phenom pitch the 9th inning.

Nuxhall said later he was scared and shaking as he took the mound. He had no idea who he was pitching to. The first batter he faced that inning was weak-hitting infielder George Fallon. He worked the count to 3 and 2 and grounded out to shortstop Ed Miller. One away. Pitcher Mort Cooper came up next. Working the count full again, Nuxhall walked him. Man on first, one out. Though Sonny didn't know it, the top of the Cardinals' order was up next.

Lead off hitter Augie Bergamo again worked the rookie to a full count. He swung at the next pitch and popped it up for the second out. One more to go.

These guys were making him work for it, but Sonny was getting them out. This wasn't so bad, was it?

Deb Garms, aging former National League batting champ emerged from the Cards dugout next. Still wild, Nuxhall again pitched the count full before walking him. 2 guys on, but 2 away. Nuxhall looked in at the next batter.

"Gee, that looks an awful lot like Stan Musial..."

Unfortunately for Sonny, it was Stan Musial and he smashed a single that scored Cooper. First baseman Ray Sanders came up next and walked on 4 strait balls. Bases loaded. Slugger Walker Cooper, Mort's younger brother came to bat. After 4 pitches he walked, scoring Garms. Bases still loaded. 2 out. Sonny got 2 strikes past Danny Litwhiler. One more strike would end this all with a respectable 2 earned runs. But the wildness came back and he threw 4 strait balls, pushing Musial home. Bases still full of Cardinals. 2nd sacker Emil Verban came up next and fought the rookie to yet another full count before he found a good one and grooved a single that scored Cooper and Sanders. McKechnie called time and took the kid out.

Reds announcer Waite Hoyt, himself a former schoolboy hurler at 16 when he debuted with the New York Giants, thought the kid looked nervous. That must have been the understatement of the season. He got rocked for 5 runs, but his much more experienced stablemates had given up 13. It wasn't a great debut, but it wasn't that bad, was it? He'd got his butt kicked by the best team in baseball. The guys he faced would go one to win the World Series that year.

For young Sonny, that was his last appearance in the majors for 8 long years. Nuxhall toiled in the Reds farm system perfecting his craft until he finally suited up in a Reds jersey again in 1952. This time Sonny stayed, pitching for his hometown team for 15 of the 16 years spent in the majors. The mainstay of the Reds staff and a real fan favorite, "Nuxy" as he became known, still holds the team record for most wins by a lefty. He also was one of the first ex-players to sit behind the microphone when he retired in the spring of 1967, going directly from the clubhouse to the broadcast booth. Teaming up with Marty Brennaman in 1974, the duo known as "Marty and Joe" spent 30 years calling the Reds games. After suffering ill health for a while, the old lefthander finally rounded third and crossed home plate on November 15, 2007.

I still remember where I was when I heard Joe died. I had moved away by then and was living far away in Hollywood. Sitting in an Italian cafe on Hollywood Boulevard I read a sterile wire service account in the newspaper. The phrase "poofy-haired fancy-boy" came to mind and I laughed out loud. Then I crossed myself and said a prayer for the Old Lefthander.

Out here in California, I still listen to the ballgames on the radio. The ocean breeze that blows into my yard where I'm sitting is a nice compliment to Vin Scully's voice calling the Dodger game. But Vin Scully is no Marty and Joe.

Marty Brennaman still calls 'em back in Cincinnati and hopefully will for a long, long time. God, I miss that. I miss Cincinnati. I miss going to opening day with Todd and Marc. I miss the silly parade and the warm summer nights listening to the Reds with Christian and Vic. I miss debating last nights Reds lineup with Christa and throwing the ball around with Charlie. I miss it so much that I am going back to Cincinnati.

The end of August, I'm going home for good.

86. Teang Wong Foo: The Greatest Story Ever Told (sort of?)

2011-07-29T17:47:00.000-07:00

March, 1887
Shanghai, China

No one thought much when the sturdy looking Chinaman in the yellow silk tunic and matching sash approached the men playing a pick-up game of baseball in a clearing just beside the docks. The two teams battling that afternoon were made up of New England sailors from the clipper ship Cyclopes and Navy men from the gunboat U.S.S. Monocacy. Although the crowd was originally filled with the few Americans that knew of and appreciated the game, by the 4th inning a sizable crowd had assembled. The bars of Shanghai's infamous Blood Alley had emptied of all U.S. Navy men who'd come to cheer on their own and hopefully scrap with the clipper men or who ever else looked eligible at the game's conclusion. The clipper's cheering section had grown to include a few missionaries and assorted bookkeepers and clerks from the American companies whose offices overlooked the bustling waterfront. A smattering of Europeans, mainly British and French, sauntered over to see what those curious Americans were up to now. A growing number of Chinese workers paused to look on, talking quietly amongst themselves, lest they be shooed away by the white devils.

The clipper men were leading by 2 runs but now the gunboat sailors had runners on first and second and their best hitter, Boatswain's Mate 2/c Spalding, was at the plate. Boatswain's Mate 2/c Spalding was from Chicago and in the not-to-distant past had played baseball around the windy city and held his own against the best semi-pros in town. When the Chinaman walked directly onto the field and made a bee-line for the pitchers mound, the Americans finally took notice of Teang Wong Foo.

According to Protestant missionary Reverend Herbert Chestnut who officiating at the game, the mysterious Chinaman gestured to the clipper's pitcher for the ball and out of sheer good-naturedness, he tossed the big fellow the ball. Slight laughter wafted from the players and spectators and a cacophony of Chinese voices welled up from the growing group of Chinese who had stopped to watch the curious game.

Foo took the ball without a word. He shifted his braided pony-tail over his shoulder and spat twice on the ground. Looking over his broad shoulders, three times he checked the runners on base. A few cat-calls (which the good Reverend Chestnut refused to record) emanated from the gunboat sailor's bench, bringing howls of laughter from the clipper men on the other side of the field. With a smile, Boatswain 2/c Spalding took up his batters stance.

Foo rocked quickly back on his right leg, curled his left around behind him and then swung his body almost completely around before snapping back and releasing the ball overhand.

There was a sound - some say it was like a train in the distance or the noise a canvas sail makes before hitting the deck - and Boatswain 2/c Spalding wound up in a heap before home plate. The crowd was silent until the sailor jumped up and dusted himself off. Then the jeers started. The clipper men cheered their "relief pitcher" and the gunboat sailors cried fowl, all the while was the incessant jingle-jangle of Mandarin being hollered from the growing Chinese section. Boatswain 2/c Spalding held up his arm to silence the crowd and regained his batting stance before home plate.

The clipper's catcher threw Foo the ball which he caught with his bare hand. Looking in, Foo duplicated his pretzel-like windup and threw another ball past Boatswain 2/c Spalding who didn't even take the bat off his shoulder. Again the crowd erupted in cheers, jeers and Mandarin. Boatswain 2/c Spalding rushed the mound dragging the Reverend/umpire Chestnut by the collar, demanding to see the ball. Standing next to Foo, who now everyone realised was quite large for a Chinaman, about 6 foot, Boatswain 2/c Spalding and Chestnut examined the ball. Besides normal grime and a few scuffs, there wasn't a thing altered on the sphere. Boatswain 2/c Spalding shook his head in amazement and walked slowly back to the plate. The Reverend returned the ball to an apathetic-looking Foo and called for play to resume.

With his former smile replaced by lips tightly closed, a determined Boatswain 2/c Spalding faced Foo. Again the curious wind-up and just like that, Boatswain 2/c Spalding swung and missed the ball. "Strike Three!" cried the Reverend/umpire Chestnut, thrusting three fingers skyward.

Roars engulfed the playing field and coins could be heard clanging as bets were settled in a dizzying array of languages. Boatswain 2/c Spalding shouldered his bat and started back to the bench. Half-way there he stopped, reversed course and headed towards the mound where Foo stood. The gunboat men rose as one and picked up bats, bracing for a fight. The clipper men discussed amongst themselves whether to stick up for "their Chinaman" or sit this one out. The British stood fast, observing, and the French evaporated into the crowd. In the ever larger Chinese section, all was quiet.

Boatswain 2/c Spalding held out his right hand. Foo, his chin slightly raised, handed the ball to him. Boatswain 2/c Spalding pushed it aside, instead shaking Foo's right hand and smiling broadly. Foo's face broke out into a wide grin as well.

The crowd erupted once again. The gunboat sailors put down their bats. The clipper men walked cautiously toward "their Chinaman" with open arms. The British noted the Americans "good show of sportsmanship" and the French reappeared and led the charge towards Foo. The Chinese started throwing firecrackers onto the field.

With Foo surrounded by his new-found admirers, missionary Chestnut translated for Foo. "he is from the village of Uwachu in the province of Kiangton. He learned to throw from need to hunt small birds after he was orphaned as a boy. A local warlord happened to see his skill killing birds with stones and adapted the young boy, elevating him at the age of 10 to be the warlord's Chief Hunt Master."

The crowd pushed closer to hear Chestnut translate and the missionary milked the undivided attention for all it was worth.

"It was in his capacity of the Chief Hunt Master that brought him to Shanghai this day, purchasing provisions for his master in Kiangton."

"I've never seen a ball curve like that!" exclaimed Boatswain's Mate 2/c Spalding. "Ask him if he can do that every time." Chestnut relayed the question to Foo.

"He says he can. He says he developed it that way because after many dead birds the game in his province became wise to Foo's great accuracy with a a stone. He says he trained himself to throw a stone around a tree so he could remain hidden from a bird's sight."

"Amazing!" exclaimed Boatswain's Mate 2/c Spalding. "Let's try something here."

Boatswain's Mate 2/c Spalding ran towards the bench his team had been using and returned with 3 bats. The first bat he erected about 20 feet in front of the pitching mound. He paced off about 10 more feet and started embedding a bat there. Seeing what he had in mind an unnamed Englishman came forward and took the other bat and with a nod from Boatswain's Mate 2/c Spalding, erected it just in front of home plate. Boatswain's Mate 2/c Spalding took a stone about 4 inches round and placed it upon the end of the bat before home plate. He walked briskly back towards Foo.

"Tell him to hit the stone." Boatswain's Mate 2/c Spalding instructed Chestnut. Informed of the plan, Foo kicked the dirt at his feet and the crowd backed off slowly, making a clear shot towards home plate. With that curious motion, Foo twisted around and fired the ball to the left side of the first bat where it abruptly curved right, cleared the second bat and abruptly curved again striking the stone on the bat at home plate.

"Amazing!" exclaimed Boatswain's Mate 2/c Spalding again and again. The way the good Reverend Chestnut relates it, Foo repeated the same throw 3 more times before darkness descended upon the Shanghai waterfront and broke up the crowd. The gunboat sailors, with the exception of Boatswain's Mate 2/c Spalding, headed back to the bars of Blood Alley. The clipper men returned to the clipper ship Cyclopes which was scheduled to depart the next morning for the long trip back to New England. The British and the French headed to their private clubs for dinner, all the while sniffing about how the Americans were always mingling with the Chinese too much for their taste.

The dispersal of the crowd left only the Reverend Chestnut, Boatswain's Mate 2/c Spalding and Teang Wong Foo. Speaking through the Reverend, Boatswain's Mate 2/c Spalding asked for and received Foo's contact address (really only the names of the province his Master had his palace) and promised to be in touch with him. Duly translated by Chestnut, Foo shrugged his shoulders and headed off into Chinese section of Shanghai.

While his shipmates drank and brawled on Blood Alley, Boatswain's Mate 2/c Spalding headed towards Shanghai's main telegraph office. He had an important wire to send to his cousin in Chicago.

02 MARCH 1887
MR. ALBERT GOODWILL SPALDING
SPALDING SPORTING GOODS CO.
118 RANDOLPH STREET CHICAGO, ILLINOIS U.S.A. AL - DISCOVERED NATIVE RIGHT-HANDED PITCHER WITH UNRIVALED CURVE BALL FOR YOUR WHITE STOCKINGS. BALL BREAKS 3 FEET. AM NOT INTOXICATED NOR UNDER NARCOTIC INFLUENCE. LONG DETAILED LETTER TO FOLLOW. TEANG WONG FOO, KIANGTON PROVINCE, VILLAGE UWACHU. WIRE REV HERBERT CHESTNUT, GRACE CHURCH, SHANGHAI FOR MEDIATION. -COUSIN THOMAS (BM 2/C U.S.N.)

Boatswain's Mate 2/c Spalding's cousin happened to be THE Albert Goodwill Spalding, part owner of the Chicago White Stockings of the National League. Always one to cover all the angles when it came to baseball, Albert Spalding capitalized on a successful career as a pitching star when he established what would quickly become the world's largest sporting goods outlet.

Upon receipt of the telegram, Albert Spalding immediately set about contacting his foreign prospect. He knew his cousin well enough that despite his propensity towards drink, was quite an astute judge of baseball flesh. Not one to exaggerate, Albert Spalding trusted his cousin implicitly. His own White Stockings, despite the aging superstar Cap Anson at 1st base, were mired in 3rd place behind the Detroit Wolverines. A whirlwind of a pitcher could be the difference between 1st and 3rd place. Besides, imagine the spike in attendance from the addition of not only a Chinaman on the White Stockings, but a damn-talented Chinaman!

After a series of telegrams sent to the Reverend Chestnut, translated and relayed by runner to Foo in Kiangton, Spalding was able to negotiate the terms that would bring Teang Wong Foo to America as a member of the 1888 Chicago White Stockings. Besides the salary Foo would earn as a White Stocking, a modest sum was settled upon to appease Foo's master in Kiangton to compensate for the loss of his adapted son and Chief Hunt Master and Albert Spalding also made a not-insignificant donation to the Reverend Chestnut's Grace Church Mission in Shanghai.

In Albert Spalding's eyes, one major obstacle remained before the was truly comfortable with adding Teang Wong Foo to his roster: White Stocking team captain and superstar, Cap Anson. Known as a hot-head and notoriously racially intolerant, Anson famously made headlines by repeatedly refusing to play against teams that fielded Negro ballplayers. Why, just as recently as this season Anson refused to have his team play against the Newark Little Giants when they sent Negro League star George Stovey out to the mound to pitch against Chicago. Spalding tried to gauge his star player's level of intolerance and whether or not he'd be adverse to playing along side a Chinaman. "I don't care what hue the fellow is" Anson reputedly said "...as long as he is on my team. If he is playing against us, by God I'll holler until he is taken out of the damned game!"

A single article, though slightly embellished and containing a few of the politically-incorrect jabs of the time, appeared in the Chicago Mail newspaper. Calling Foo "a terror in the pitcher's box as has never been known in baseball circles" it goes on to warn the Detroit team of Foo's imminent arrival in Chicago. Things were going smoother than annual contract negotiation with his own Cap Anson. All that remained was the formality of permission to immigrate to the United States.

22 NOVEMBER 1887
MR. ALBERT GOODWILL SPALDING
SPALDING SPORTING GOODS CO.
118 RANDOLPH STREET CHICAGO, ILLINOIS U.S.A.
CITING CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT OF 1882 UNITED STATES CONSUL SHANGHAI DENIES PERMISSION OF IMMIGRATION FOR TEANG WONG FOO, CHINESE NATL. -RESPECTFULLY, E.B. HODGES ASST. U.S. CONSUL SHANGHAI

The Chinese Exclusion Act was ratified into law five years previous to all but end the immigration of Chinese to the west coast of the United States. The multitudes of native Chinese, once tolerated because of their hard work ethic and cheap labor, were now seen as a threat to American jobs and no longer deemed useful. Teang Wong Foo was just one of thousands caught up in this unfortunate racist policy of the United States.

Despite a flurry of telegrams sent to his influential friends in Washington, Albert Spalding realized that he would have to do without Teang Wong Foo and his amazing curve ball at least for the 1888 season. Through the Reverend Chestnut, Spalding kept tabs on Foo who did not wander far from his Master's palace in Kiangton. Via clipper ship, Spalding sent a crate of state-of-the-art baseball equipment from his Chicago store, including a complete White Stocking uniform. What Teang Wong Foo or any of his country men in the palace thought of these gifts was not recorded.

Despite leading the National League in batting, the Chicago White Stockings still finished 9 games behind the New York Giants in 1888. It's hard to say how many times Albert Spalding's mind wondered about how many games Teang Wong Foo's curve ball could have won for Chicago that season, but to think it wasn't on his mind would be far from the truth. Albert Spalding, as always, covering all the angles when it came to baseball, had an idea.

It would be the greatest world tour ever attempted to promote the American game of baseball world-wide. Starting in Chicago, Spalding would lead a 2 teams of major league stars west to California, then across the Pacific to Hawaii, New Zealand and Australia. The tour would then head north-west stopping in Shanghai, China. Before the expedition boarded the steamship to continue on to Europe, Albert Spalding intended to increase his wards by one more - a Chinaman by the name of Teang Wong Foo.

Spalding was playing the odds that amongst all the fanfare surrounding the tour, the addition of one more of those exotic ballplayers wouldn't be noticed. Perhaps he was planning to hide him as a valet or porter, we just don't know for sure. What is known is that the appropriate telegrams were sent and arrangements were made for Foo to meet the group when they arrived in Shanghai January 9th, 1889 on the steamship S.S. Salier.

But alas, it was not to be. After successful baseball exhibitions in Australia and New Zealand, Albert Spalding ran up against something he had absolutely no control over - the weather. A late-season typhoon followed by a succession of inclement rain storms postponed the S.S. Salier's departure for 2 weeks. In the meantime the tour's European facilitators warned against delaying or missing the Italian and French dates - too many Royal spectators were scheduled to attend and it would look bad for a bunch of sportsmen from the United States to cancel on them.

With a heart-felt dread, Albert Spalding cancelled the China leg of the trip and the S.S. Salier set a course for Ceylon, en route to Egypt and Europe.

What happened to Teang Wong Foo after January of 1889 was never documented. A check of immigration records reveal no Chinese national by that name ever coming to these shores and it would have been unlikely he found a way to circumvent the Chinese Exclusion Act before its 1943 repeal. It goes without saying the name "Foo" does not appear in any records of the old National League. In fact the only real public record of the whole Teang Wong Foo incident is the single article in the Chicago Mail. Albert Spalding of course went on to great financial success with his sporting goods and publishing empire. His White Stockings were renamed the "Colts" in 1890, then briefly became the "Orphans" before finally taking on their current moniker of the "Cubs" in 1903. The fate of Boatswain's Mate 2/c Spalding, besides his earning a Spanish American War campaign medal, honorable discharge from the Navy in 1910 and his death at the age of 82, is unknown. Through church records we find that the Reverend Herbert Chestnut left Shanghai in 1892 for a remote mission near Hangkow in the Yangtze Valley and was one of the many missionaries that went missing during the Boxer Rebellion of 1899-1900. His name appeared on the Rebellion Memorial Wall of Grace Church in Shanghai until it was removed by the communist government in the 1950's and the church destroyed to make room for a cultural center and soccer training complex.

Thanks for indulging me with this fun little story. The seeds of it began with a small article David MacDonald wrote in issue 20 of The National Pastime. In it MacDonald quotes from the actual Chicago Mail newspaper article from 1887 describing the imminent arrival of one Chinaman named Teang Wong Foo on the Chicago White Stockings. The article, riddled with the tasteless racial stereotypes of the time, was obviously a hoax. However the tie in with Albert Goodwill Spalding's real 1888-1889 World Tour and notorious racist Cap Anson was too good to pass up! I contacted David McDonald about the story and he told me it was found while researching something else entirely. Seems like we find a lot of other really great forgotten stories that way. Hope you enjoyed it and a special thanks to David MacDonald for taking the time to talk with me and for writing that neat little story in the first place.

85. Bill Rumler: Exile and Redemption in the Pacific Coast League

2011-07-16T18:07:00.000-07:00

While the 1919 Black Sox Scandal is well known by every baseball fan, the numerous other scandals that rocked professional baseball at the time are not. Perhaps the next biggest involved the Pacific Coast League and the 1919 pennant race. What happened was in July of 1920 Tigers first baseman "Babe" Borton showed up at the Los Angeles hotel the Salt Lake City Bees were staying at. Borton approached Sailor Stroud, the Bees' starting pitcher, and tried handing him $300 to throw that afternoon's game against Vernon. Stroud declined and quickly left the hotel. Borton, undaunted, turned around and set his sights on outfielder Harl Maggert. The 37 year-old Maggert was at the time knocking the cover off the ball, leading the PCL with a .370 average. Unlike Stroud, Maggert pocketed the $300.

Stroud took the mound later that afternoon and was promptly knocked out of the box in the first inning as the Tigers crushed the Bees. That evening Borton again showed up in the lobby of the hotel and cornered Stroud, trying to force another $300 on him, saying "you earned it." Again Sailor Stroud refused to take the money, insisting he just had a lousy day.

Borton wasn't very careful in his role as the world's most inept bagman. Flashing wads of cash in a busy hotel lobby really wasn't a smart idea. With all the rumors floating around about the previous years World Series, this flagrant appearance of impropriety was just begging for investigation. Add onto the pile of circumstantial evidence that pretty much all the implicated White Sox players with the exception of Shoeless Joe Jackson had played in the Pacific Coast League. The dirtiest man ever to put on a uniform, Hal Chase, had also come from the Coast League and for years rumors had been circulating that gamblers enjoyed an uncomfortably close relationship with many of the players. Officials that had so often looked the other way were now forced to open an investigation. What they found made them wish Borton had left his wallet at home that fateful July afternoon...

Borton tried the usual denials, testifying the $300 bucks he was handing out wasn't a bribe but was losses owed in craps games, not to lose a game. Nice try, but no one was buying it. Although the owners at first tried to sweep it all under the rug by quickly banning Borton and suspending Maggert, the newspapers, smelling blood, wanted more. And boy oh boy, was there more.

Turns out Borton spent much of the previous season handing cash out to anyone who would take it to ensure his team won the pennant. Vernon, the town which the Tigers represented is in fact a small oasis just south of Los Angeles. I say "oasis" because it was pretty much a no-holds barred law-free zone. Gambling was gleefully overlooked and on Sundays when respectable communities banned all sporting events and liquor sales, Vernon had no such inconvenient legislature on their books. The whole town was a festering sore of all the seamy elements Southern California had to offer. The cash Borton was spreading around came from what the Babe called the "Fan's Fund" because it was supposedly filled with donations from die-hard Vernon fans. That many of the "die-hard Vernon fans" were probably gamblers was a fact lost on no one with half a brain, but amongst the "subscribers" to the fund were quite a few Hollywood luminaries like actor Fatty Arbuckle, movie studio mogul Samuel Goldwyn and Sid Grauman, owner of the famed Chinese Theater. By the time the investigation finally ended dozens of PCL players testified to having been offered amounts ranging from $100 to $1700 to throw games to the Tigers during the 1919 and 1920 season. The most damaging testimony was from Seattle's first baseman Rod Murphy. In his deposition Murphy related how he was approached by Seattle gambler Nate Raymond in August, 1920 and offered $3000 to throw games to Vernon. In order to make Murphy feel more at ease with his crooked proposition, Raymond related how he'd done this kind of thing before and described how he was behind the fixing of the Vernon-Salt Lake City series in 1919. The most damning evidence was what Raymond said next: "Rod, to prove my truthfulness to you I will mention two players. Ask Maggert and Borton how I treated them in our agreement."

It was a terrible blow to the Pacific Coast League whose reputation was currently taking hits from the Black Sox scandal. Besides the obviously guilty Maggert and Borton, the owners decided to ban pitchers Tom Seaton and Casey Smith of the San Francisco Seals and Salt Lake's star outfielder, Bill Rumler.

Borton testified he gave Rumler $200 (some say $250) to lay down against Vernon when the 2 teams met in at the end of the 1919 season. Investigators were able to track down bank drafts in the amount of $250 to Rumler and $500 to his teammate Gene Dale. Dale retired after the season and was out of the scope of the investigation but Rumler was still active. When questioned, Rumler never denied taking the cash, but insisted it was merely a friendly bet with Borton over whose team would win the 1919 pennant. Since Borton and his Vernon team won the pennant, it was never clear why he would be the one paying off Rumler. The owners thought the same thing you're probably thinking: that's pretty weak. Bill Rumler was suspended indefinitely.

At the time of his suspension, the 29 year-old Bill Rumler was batting close to .350 and seemed to be on his way back to the major leagues. The son of German and Russian immigrant Mennonite farmers from Nebraska, he'd gotten a late start in his career and to underline that fact, his nickname was "Ole Bill." He played with the St. Louis Browns sporadically from 1914-17 until he was sent to France to fight in the war. He joined Salt Lake in '19 and was one of the team's star players. Now Ole Bill was indefinitely suspended.

Unlike the other players implicated, Rumler fought back. At a meeting of the owners, PCL president William McCarthy was so convinced Rumler was dirty that he emotionally vowed to resign as president if the other owners voted to reinstate him. They did not and voted unanimously to a 5-year ban. It amounted to a lifetime banishment because Rumler, now pushing 30, would most definitely not be able to play again after spending 5 years on the sidelines. No one expected to hear from Ole Bill again.

Everyone that is, except Ole Bill himself.

Rumler never changed his story about the $200 and always insisted on his innocence. While the other banished players gave up the game, Rumler went underground, changed his name to Red Moore and played on any team that would pay him. Roaming the outfield on rough and tumble teams representing mining towns in the Dakotas and smoke-belching industrial cities in the Midwest, Rumler battered the small-time competition he faced, all the while biding his time and crossing off the days until the 5 years ended.

In the spring of 1929 Ole Bill resurfaced and showed up at the Hollywood Sheiks training camp. Much had changed since Rumler's exile - for one his old team, the Salt Lake City Bees, had up and moved to Hollywood and were dubbed "The Sheiks" after the 1921 Rudolph Valentino movie. The team's owner Bill Lane welcomed him back and Ole Bill shocked everyone by easily beating out his younger competition in the outfield. By the time the season began, Rumler was the Sheiks starting centerfielder.

8 years after his last appearance in organized ball, Bill Rumler had a season that players half his age would die for. In 140 games the 38 year-old batted a career high .386 and smacked 26 home runs leading his Sheiks to the PCL playoffs against the Mission Reds. The Sheiks had been the joke of the league for a few seasons, never finishing above 4th place their entire tenure in Hollywood, but in 1929 spurred on by their aging outfielder, they came alive. After dropping the first 2 games to the Reds, the Sheiks roared back and won the next 3 games. In the 4th game Rumler was hit in the head by a pitch and knocked unconscious. He was rushed to the hospital where it was feared he would pass away during the night but Rumler surprised the doctors by regaining consciousness. Although he appeared to be out of the woods, the physicians all insisted he not play anymore that year. Rumler's triumphant come-back season was over.

But Ole Bill had come too damn far to end it like that.

Defying everyone, he checked himself out of the hospital the following day and suited up for the sixth game against the Reds. Sitting on the bench he watched as the Sheiks fought the Reds to a 3-3 tie. In the bottom of the 8th second baseman Howie Burkett singled and outfielder Liz Funk bunted safely. The catcher Les Cook singled but Burkett was forced out at third. With 2 on and 1 away, manager Ossie Vitt sent Rumler in to pinch hit for outfielder Cleo Carlyle. It's lost to history what exactly Ole Bill was thinking as he stepped up to plate to face Misson's ace pitcher, the 24 game winner Bert Cole.

With the screams of the hometown crowd of 15,000 reverberating inside his battered skull, Ole Bill lined a single to left that scored Cole. It was the go ahead run as the Sheiks jumped all over the Reds on their way to a 5 run inning that won the game and championship.

Now Ole Bill Rumler's season was over.

It has to be one of the best comeback stories of all time, so good in fact that whatever came after could only be underwhelming. Rumler's 1930 season started off just as good as the previous year, but eventually bad luck and age caught up with him. On an overnight train ride to Oakland Rumler had a nightmare and kicked his foot through his Pullman car's window. The deep cuts cost him a week on the pines but he roared back and was batting a killer .353 when he busted his ankle in August, putting him out for the remainder of the season.

Come spring he tried regaining his old form but after years of injuries, Ole Bill's body had finally caught up to his nickname. He signed on with the Denver Bears but only managed .236 with them before he switched to a barnstorming team called the Canadian-American Clowns for what was left of the season. 1932 found Ole Bill as player-manager of the class D Lincoln Links. Come June he was hitting .350 and had managed the Links to a 12-26 record when he punched an umpire in the nose. Rumler was fined $25 for inciting a riot and the league suspended him indefinitely. Ole Bill Rumler's professional baseball career was over.

Rumler returned to the Mennonite community he started from, Milford, Nebraska. There he remained a popular town character and became Milford's police chief until retiring in 1964 at the age of 73. When he died two years later in 1966, Ole Bill had never wavered from his story about the $200, always insisting he never threw a baseball game for money.

84. Hank Greenberg: A Semi-Pro Grows In Brooklyn

2011-07-16T12:42:00.000-07:00

Here's a card and story I featured in the premier issue of 21. Just about everyone knows about Hank Greenberg, his being the first Jewish baseball superstar and how he was an idol to so many kids during the depression. His selflessness is well documented in his serving the country during the entire war as an Air Corps officer in India and China and his dramatic return to the Tigers in time to spark their late-season pennant drive and World Series victory in 1945. Instead of all that well-covered ground, I wanted to look at his start in pro ball with the semi-pro Brooklyn Bay Parkways. The Parkways were part of the vibrant semi-pro circuit around the New York metropolitan area from the 1910's to the 1940's. These teams, The Bushwicks being the most famous, were at times the equal of a high-minor league team of the era and occasionally out-drew major league teams in attendance. The New York City semi-pro circuit was the launching pad for many major league stars such as Waite Hoyt, Whitey Ford and Marius Russo as well as the swan song for former players like George Earnshaw, Dazzy Vance and Jeff Tesreau. I could draw and write about these great semi-pro teams constantly and not run out of stories and players to feature, but then that would be boring, wouldn't it? So I'll simply mix them in with Negro Leaguer's, minor league stars, pre-war Japanese players and unknown no-body's who need to be known. As a note to those who purchased the first issue of 21 (thanks!), the drawing you see here is a sightly different version of the one in the journal, I sometimes design a few variations and just pick one in the end, trashing the other versions. For some reason I didn't do that with Greenberg and I stumbled on it the other day looking for something else, so I figured I'd use it in this weeks story...

As a boy growing up in the Bronx, Hank Greenberg played ball every chance he could. Big and uncoordinated at first, he made up for his shortcomings with his passion and relentless practice. In high school he was scouted by the New York Giants but they rejected him so much that they refused to allow him to volunteer to shag fly balls at the Polo Grounds during batting practice. Turning to basketball, he was named the best high school center in the New York City, was granted an athletic scholarship to New York University and had aspirations of becoming a professional basketball player. Still, baseball was his first love and Hank practiced every chance he could, refining his hitting skills by paying neighborhood kids to pitch to him.

One day he was spotted playing sandlot ball and was asked to play for the semi-pro Brooklyn Bay Parkways. The Bay Parkways were an independent team who played local, Negro league and touring teams of barnstorming major leaguers. Like the Brooklyn Bushwicks, these independent teams featured future and former big league players and at times played the same level of ball as a middle-tier minor league team. But the big thing that attracted young Hank was that they were paid to play baseball.

So that Sunday, Greenberg took the long subway ride from his home in the Bronx to Erasmus Field in Brooklyn and played in his first semi-pro game. After the game in which he played poorly, he did not receive any money. Because of his performance he didn’t say anything. The next Sunday he belted 3 home runs in a doubleheader and still did not receive any money at the end of the day. Disappointed, he told the manager he wasn’t coming back the following week. George Lippe, the Bay Parkways skipper, asked why. When told it was because he didn’t get paid, the startled manager said that he thought Greenberg was an amateur and did not want to get paid in order to preserve his eligibility to play collegiate sports. Hank said he didn’t care about that, it took a long time to travel all the way to Brooklyn and he expected to be paid for his contribution to the team. Lippe paid him then and there, promising him $10 for every Sunday doubleheader he played. In 1929 that was a considerable amount of money. Hank Greenberg was now a professional ballplayer.

Practicing his hitting everyday he steadily improved his skills and it began to show. Playing against the talented House Of David traveling team Greenberg had 6 RBI's on 2 home runs and earned his first mention in a newspaper. After 21 games he was batting a heady .454. Scouts started to show interest and Greenberg was brought to the mill town of East Douglas, Massachusetts by Detroit Tigers scout Jean Dubuc. Like the Bay Parkways, East Douglas was part of a highly competitive semi-pro league and after playing there for a few weeks the Washington Senators asked him to come to Boston to work out with the team. Hitting batting practice against the great Walter Johnson, a nervous Greenberg managed to only hit one foul ball after another and was sent back to East Douglas without being offered a contract.

The hometown New York Yankees came knocking next. Scout Paul Kritchell had been keeping an eye on Greenberg since he was in high school and he finally asked Hank to come to Yankee Stadium to talk. While watching a game as guest of the Yankees, Kritchell pointed to first base and declared that Lou Gehrig was all washed up and that if he signed, Hank would soon have his job. The Yankees were the class of the league. To wear the pinstripes was something all ballplayers dream of, but deep down Greenberg knew the 26 year-old Gehrig was far from washed up. If he signed with New York, there was a big likelihood that he would be trapped in the minor leagues for a long time, waiting for the Iron Horse to get injured or retire. As tempting as it was for the kid from the Bronx, he turned the Yankees down. Surprisingly, the Senators made an offer to Hank and the Tigers also came through with a generous contract. Thankful for the way scout Jean Dubuc had treated him, Greenberg signed with Detroit. By 1933 Greenberg would be the starting first baseman of the Detroit Tigers and Lou Gehrig, on his way to set a record for playing in the most consecutive games, wouldn’t give up his job at first until 1939.

83. Roy Hobbs: A Tale of 2 Roy's

2011-07-03T10:55:00.000-07:00

Like most baseball fans, I ran out to watch Barry Levinson's 1984 movie "The Natural." As a budding baseball history geek, I was enthralled with the attention to detail the set decorators, costume designers and graphic artists had spent bringing to life the sights and sounds of 1939 baseball. As a testament to the talent of those men and women, the New York Knights jersey is still sold by many companies and I spy at least one at every major league ballgame I go to. I've talked about all this before in the story and card I did of his teammate on the Knights, Bump Baily.

The movie begins with the teenage Roy and girlfriend Iris (very distractingly and unconvincingly played by Glenn Close and Robert Redford who were, what, 50 something at the time?) making love on the eve of Roy's call-up to the Chicago Cubs. As most everyone knows, Hobbs gets shot by a deranged woman and his career and life gets sidetracked and 16 years later he reemerges as a 35 year-old rookie for the moribund New York Knights. An all-around good guy with the virtues of a slightly-jaded Christy Mathewson, Redford's Roy Hobbs smiles his way through a doomed love affair with his manager's fem-fatale niece Memo Paris, mid-season batting slump and temptations from shady gamblers. The spectacular final scene during the playoff game against the Pirates caps off an inspiring movie as the hero finds out he is indeed the father of Iris's kid and sends a Spalding baseball into the Knights Field lighting system, winning not only ownership of the team for Pop Fisher, but baseball immortality, Hobbs' life-long dream. The closing sequence shows Roy playing catch with his son, safe and sound back on the farm where he started from. I assume Iris, who's not featured in the shot, is in the kitchen putting the finishing touches on a pie or something. The newly reunited Hobbs' family lives happily ever after.

Nice. So years later I snatched up a used paperback copy of the book by Bernard Malamud that the movie was based on. I sat on it for a while, not really all that gassed up to just read what the movie ably portrayed on screen. But when my buddy Charlie Vascellaro, the famed sportswriter and raconteur, saw it laying around and told me it wasn't anywhere near what I thought it was, I finally did crack it open. Boy was I surprised! The Roy Hobbs in the novel was the exact opposite of Redford's sugary version.

The book had a dark tone to it. Hobbs wasn't a fresh-faced teen in the beginning but a normal jock who just cares about himself. There was no teenage love affair with a corn-fed Iris from back home. In the book Iris was a frumpy middle-aged single mom and groupie he alternately bangs and ignores whenever the Knights are in Chicago to play the Cubs. He finally drops her like a bad habit when she tells him that she is a grandmother. He's mean to kids, doesn't get along with his teammates and is driven by that one thing: "When I walk down the street I want people to say: There goes Roy Hobbs. The best there ever was..." He doesn't really care about Pop Fisher and his sob story about losing the Knights to his partner, the evil Judge Banner. Hobbs is constantly preoccupied with turning a buck, continually complaining to The Judge to give him a raise because of how good he is. He even takes the Judge's money to throw the final game so he has a nest egg to run off with the manager's niece. When he finally gets pangs of regret after Iris lets him know she's knocked up with his kid he decides to become the hero and win the game. But unlike in the movie, he strikes out to end the game. The last scene in the book reveals a broken Roy Hobbs, passing a newspaper seller hawking papers reporting his expulsion from baseball and the compete erasure of his name and statistics from the record book.

Wow.

Now imagine if that was the movie. Would you have liked it better? Would "The Natural" have stayed such a popular baseball movie with an anti-hero and an ending like that? Would I see New York Knights jerseys with the number 9 on the back at major league ballgames? I don't know, probably not. Leaving the theater after seeing Hobbs blow up the scoreboard at Knights Field fills you with such a sense of euphoria and child-like glee that I think if the movie ended as sudden and demoralizing as the book it would not have had the same lasting impact. I do, however, feel like THAT would have been a movie I would have liked much better. Watching Redford as Roy Hobbs now 25 years later I see how schmaltzy his acting is. And his ever-present 70's man foppy hair-do bothers my historically accurate nerves (I read that he has a clause in his contracts that makes him exempt from changing his dopey hair style!). The silly love story with Iris is just a patch-work ploy to find a place for Glenn Close in the script. Here's a little something to show you how deep the scriptwriter was: did you realize that the young pitcher who gives up Hobbs' homer at the end of the movie is supposed to be the kid in the beginning of the movie who receives the baseball from young Roy after he strikes out "The Whammer"?

Anyway, flaws aside, I'd still watch this movie over any other baseball movie, even, yes, I'm going to say it: even over the darling of the baseball crowd: "Bull Durham." I'm sorry, I really didn't buy Tim Robbins as a ballplayer back then and I sure as hell don't now. And you know, I thought Annie Savoy was friggin' annoying. Yeah, I said that too. I went to art school and knew whole roomfuls of Annie Savoy's, chicks from medium-sized towns that talked like a thesaurus and believed that a few Edith Piaf LPs and becoming a self-appointed aficionado of something as pedestrian as baseball would make them the big, cool fish in the stagnant pond of whatever mediocre burg they were from. Yeah, see, I dated a few of them, trust me. But I will say this: Kevin Costner was good as catcher Crash Davis. And speaking of him, how about that movie where he relives his life story while pitching a no-hitter at Yankee Stadium? My Mom rented me that movie one Christmas when I was visiting. I really didn't want to watch it, but was glad I did because I thought it was pretty good. Quite a few baseball guys I know quietly admit to liking it as well. Just don't tell anybody...

But anyway, Back to Roy Hobbs. When I decided to do a Hobbs card, I was torn between the good Hobbs of the movie and the bad Hobbs of the novel. Liking the novel much more, I decided on the bad one when writing the back of the card. To save everyone's eye sight I'll reproduce the text below:

Roy Edward Hobbs
Bats: Left Throws: Left
Born: Aug. 10, 1905 Sabotac Valley, Iowa
Died: March 18, 1966 Grainger, Texas

Signed as a pitching phenom by the Cubs in 1923, Hobbs’ promising career was cut short when a deranged woman shot him. Hobbs slowly regained his skills playing semi-pro ball and at age 35 made a come-back with the New York Knights. He made a splash from the start by knocking the cover off the ball in his first major league at bat. He broke the record for doubles by a rookie and his 46 home runs spearheaded the Knights drive to the pennant. After he went 0 for 4 in the one-game playoff against Pittsburgh it was shown that Hobbs and pitcher Al Fowler were bribed by Knights owner Judge Albert Banner to lose the game. The commissioner of baseball banned Hobbs from baseball and removed all traces of him from the record books. A broken man, he died an oil field accident in 1966.

82. Frederick Benteen: Baseball & Custer's 7th Cavalry

2011-06-29T11:34:00.000-07:00

If you haven't guessed by now, I'm always interested in presenting characters and situations in history you normally wouldn't associate with the game of baseball. Without any further meandering, I bring you a story of baseball and the man who saved what remained of Custer's 7th Cavalry in The Battle of Little Big Horn...

Frederick Benteen was born in Petersburg, Virginia in 1834. His family was originally from Baltimore and he was brought up in a thoroughly Southern family which became important when his family moved to St. Louis, Missouri as a teenager. Missouri at this time was a territory in flames - half of the settlers wanted slavery and the other half did not. Many acts of unspeakable terrorism was perpetrated on both sides in the years leading up to the Civil War and identifying oneself with either the North or the South was a matter of both pride and preservation.

After relocating to St. Louis, the young Benteen developed a love for the new game of "base ball." As in New York City, the game appealed to the new generation of young, urban middle-class gentleman of which Frederick, as a professional sign painter, belonged. The strong, athletic young man apparently was pretty good for he played on the city's Cyclone Club, one of the best in the area. The new game was associated with the North, something Benteen's staunch Southern father was against, and to make matters even worse, Frederick went one step further and sided with the Union when war broke out in 1861. In a terrible showdown, the elder Benteen told his son that he hoped the first bullet fired in the war killed him, preferably fired by one of the plethora of Benteen's who were fighting for the South.

With that, Frederick Benteen embarked on a career in the U.S. Army, but base ball was never far away.

Starting out as a 1st lieutenant in the 10th Missouri Volunteer cavalry he quickly rose through the ranks as the list of battles he took part in piled up: Wilson's Creek, Bolivar, Milliken's Bend, Pea Ridge, and Vicksburg. By the time the war ended he was a full-bird colonel commanding the 138th United States Colored Infantry. He was judged by his superiors to be an exceptional combat leader and was offered the chance to stay in the regular army at the wars end. A newspaper article that quotes from a letter from Benteen himself describes him organizing and playing in 3 ball games in one day!

Benteen was reduced to the rank of captain (the officer corps of the peacetime army was very small so everyone was reduced in rank) and posted to command H Company of the newly-formed 7th Cavalry Regiment. The field commander of the unit was the famed "Boy General" George Armstrong Custer (reduced in rank to Lt. Colonel). Benteen, who was older than Custer, did not like him from the get-go. For one, Custer was younger and Benteen considered it a slight to be under Custer's command. There was also a great divide between officers who had been educated at the elite West Point Military Academy and those, like Benteen, who were appointed to officer rank from the civilian world. Their style of leadership was also at odds - Custer was somewhat of a romantic, daydreaming of glorious cavalry charges and dashing knights of old. He liked to think of himself as a gentleman who appreciated the finer things in life and meticulously fussed over his appearance and image. Benteen was more of a modern man, more practical when it came to envisioning warfare and looked not to the past, but to the present, for things to inspire his men: things such as baseball. He was something of a 1870's stud - he had muscular biceps, carried himself with a manly swagger and wasn't afraid to be hands-on.

The 7th Cavalry was as dysfunctional as a unit could be and still stay together. The regiment was divided into 2 camps: those who liked Custer and those who didn't. Those who did were treated to never-ending social engagements sponsored by Custer's wife Libby and it was alleged preference when advancement time came. Custer was also a teetotaler and didn't have much respect for heavy boozers. Being posted to a cavalry regiment on the great plains or the Black Hills back in those days was one long battle against boredom and many officers destroyed their careers because they turned to the sauce in order to cope with the hard and lonely life. Benteen tended to overdue it on occasion, sometimes making a spectacle of himself. Away from his family he also earned a reputation of turning into "Mr. Hands" when intoxicated. In his defense, by the early 1870's he had seen the death of 3 of his 4 children due to a hereditary condition passed down by him, and his beloved wife and surviving son were far away in Atlanta. He was also increasingly at odds with the Custer group that ruled the regiment.

Benteen quickly formed "Benteen's Base Ball Club" which helped not only to satisfy the captain's baseball fix but game helped create a sense of camaraderie and pride that made H Company the 7th best unit. The Benteen's played ball regardless of their surroundings and their captain would invite other local nines to engage his team at every chance he could get. Even in the remote regions the 7th campaigned there was always a small town or group of miners who enjoyed a good game of base ball. Benteen and his boys prided themselves on bringing the game to the most inhospitable places in the west. During the Black Hills expedition of 1874 the team found time to play a few games, making temporary ball fields complete with grandiose names such as "Custer Park" and "Genevieve Park." To underline the fact that danger, in the form of Indians on the warpath, was always near, armed pickets were posted nearby for protection. The games were very popular with the cavalrymen and Custer even grudgingly attended a game. When Company H was rushed east to New Orleans to help quell a race riot in the fall of 1874, The Benteen's made sure to pack their equipment and find time for games with other army teams stationed nearby.

I've been unable to find out exactly what position the captain regularly played. I'm guessing that he didn't participate in actual games at this point in his career. Officers were discouraged from mixing with the enlisted men so he probably held a managerial role with the club. By the time the 7th Cavalry embarked on the Sioux Expedition in the spring of 1876 the Benteen's were known through out the west as a first-class ballclub. A few players were deemed good enough to pursue professional careers when they left the service.

The Benteen's captain and starting pitcher was 1st Sergeant Joseph McCurry. He was regarded as the best player on the team and was due to be discharged in 1877 where he was encouraged to pursue playing the game professionally. Second baseman "Fatty" Williams was another Benteen who was considered good enough to turn pro. Company H's own baseball reporter, Trooper Theodore Ewert, recorded that Williams had signed a contract to play ball for Pittsburgh after his enlistment was up. (Although his name is given as "George Williams," I believe Fatty was actually named William Williams. A look at the company H muster rolls made me draw this conclusion).

However, a little place called Little Big Horn would end that hope for many.

Many better historians can tell you what happened on the Little Big Horn better than I can, so I am going to just give a quick summation as it relates to Benteen. Since Custer and Benteen were at odds much of the time, the Captain was given command of a battalion and told to protect Custer's left flank. Custer and his favorite officers would lead the rest of the 7th Cavalry in a triumphant charge and defeat the Sioux on their own. After wandering around for a few hours a rider from Custer's command delivered a note telling the Captain to: "Come on. Big village. Be quick. Bring packs."

Benteen collected the pack animals that carried the supplies and ammunition Custer asked for and rode off towards where he was supposed to be. Along the way Benteen's command met up with a battalion led by Major Reno. They had been routed by a huge number of Sioux and were taking a beating while loosely defending a hilltop where the retreating troopers had paused. Major Reno had all but cracked under the pressure and it was here that Benteen became a hero.

With the addition of his command, including the formidable H Company, Benteen usurped command and mounted a spirited defense of the hilltop. Coming to the aid of Custer was out of the question - it was all they could do to save their own hides. The attacking Sioux were joined by the Lakota and Cheyenne who had just wiped out Custer and his men. Benteen commanded his men in a 24 hour defensive fight where displayed immense leadership and bravery by leading from the front and making calm, rational command decisions under heavy fire. While Reno hid with the pack horses, Benteen was wounded in the thumb and had the heel of his boot shot off. At two separate time when it looked as if his precarious position was about to be overtaken, he and his troopers turned the tables on the attacking Indians and charged.

Benteen's leadership saved the remaining men of the 7th Cavalry.

Later Benteen would be criticised for not trying to get to Custer quicker and his decision to make a defensive position with Reno rather than charge towards Custer's command was said by some to have caused Custer's demise. From what I have read, I think Benteen acted correctly and it was only his cool actions under fire that saved the entire 7th Cavalry from decimation that June afternoon. I can also field the idea that Benteen's elite H Company, which displayed such a high degree of esprit de corp and discipline during the hilltop battle, was able to hold out against vastly superior numbers due in part to the pride and teamwork drilled into them through the baseball team.

But what became of The Benteen's? The team's captain and pitcher Joseph McCurry was wounded in the shoulder that day and never made it to the big leagues. Likewise future Pittsburgh player "Fatty" Williams was wounded in the hilltop battle and though he lived until 1919, he never appeared in a ballgame with Pittsburgh. Pitcher Alex Bishop's baseball career ended after sustaining wounds on the hilltop defenses and Charlie Bishop was wounded in the arm.

I've been unable to find any other reference to baseball in the 7th Cavalry after Little Big Horn. It's possible to surmise that the game was no longer played after the decimation of more than half the regiment. The once proud unit was now demoralized and I'm sure revenge, not baseball was on the minds of the remaining officers and troopers. Besides, it looks like almost half of the Benteen ballclub was wounded in the battle. Benteen himself remained in the Cavalry although he remained a controversial figure. Custer's wife Libby and her highly placed political benefactors launched a tireless campaign that used every excuse imaginable to shift blame for the massacre from her husband to anyone else and Benteen bore part of this unwarranted slander. He continued to be a talented and brave combat officer and was decorated for his part in the campaign against the Nez Perce Indians. A bitter man, he sank deeper and deeper into alcohol abuse and was suspended for a year after he was convicted of being drunk and disorderly. He retired from the army in 1888 due to rheumatism which he claimed was caused not by 25 years of combat, but by playing his beloved game of baseball.

Among the many references I used for this little piece was Tim Wolter's article in The National Pastime Number 17 called "Bats and Saddles", a great website on 19th Century baseball in St. Louis called "This Game of Games", and James Donovan's superb book "A Terrible Glory."

81. Pete Gray: Single-Handedly Destroyed The Browns?

2011-06-21T17:38:00.001-07:00

Back in 1989, my very first client as a graphic designer was Will Arlt, owner of the late Cooperstown Ball Cap Company. They made the greatest reproductions of old-style ballcaps ever. The company is no longer around, but don't worry, it is re-emerging in a slightly larger form as the Ideal Cap Company. Anyway, I traded my services for caps, I thought (and still do) they were the greatest thing ever made out of wool, and every delivery bearing the Cooperstown label made me rip the box open like a kid at Christmas! Ever once in a while Will would slip in an unsolicited cap. One of those was a 1944 St. Louis Browns cap. It had a brown bill, white crown with orange and brown stripes - the friggin' ugliest cap before the Astros and Padres dirtied up the 1970's. For some reason I really came to like this bastard cap, wearing it often and getting comments from more fashion-minded folks and every so often a wink from an oldster who'd mumble "hey, the Brownies!"

The Browns are the goats of baseball history. Even their greatest moment, winning the 1944 American League pennant, is dismissed as an anomaly brought on by wartime deprivations. At a glance, that's pretty much correct - after '44 they just sank lower and lower, settling into position as the league's whipping boy and occasional headline grabber when owner Bill Veeck would stage one of his wacky stunts. The Browns were also known for their hiring of one-armed Pete Gray, who perhaps more than anything else underlined the desperate straits major league baseball found itself in during World War II. But just like everything else, peel back the skin and there is much more under the surface: One can make the point that by hiring Pete Gray, The St. Louis Browns destroyed any chance their franchise had in turning around their fortunes. Yeah, I said it: Pete Gray destroyed the Browns.

The Browns team that won the pennant in 1944 did so by expert management by skipper Luke Sewell. He cleverly platooned his players and was able to secure the services of a few guys who, because of their defense plant jobs, could play only on weekends. Often disparaged as a bunch of cast-offs and boozers, that perception is only partly correct. Sure they had some first-class tipplers like Sig Jakucki and Mike Kreevich, but on a whole the quality of players the Browns fielded wasn't any worse than what the Yankees were putting in pinstripes at the time. After the excitement of the 1944 season, The Browns had formed a tight-knit team that carried themselves with pride. Despite losing the World Series the team had confidence going into spring training that they had essentially the same group of guys and the rest of the American League was, if anything, weaker due to the draft.

The only thing the Browns lacked in 1944 was popularity in their own home town. St. Louis was a Cardinals town and had been since the 1920's. Even though while traveling on the road fans flocked to see the upstart Browns, attendance at their home games, even when in first place, was much less than the Cardinals. Management knew they needed a little something more than just fielding a good team. Enter Pete Gray.

Like many American boys he grew up with a passion and talent for baseball. Unfortunately a fall from a delivery truck crushed his arm and it had to be amputated just above the elbow. Unlike many boys who would have given up his dream of playing professionally, his disability only made Pete bear down harder. Through countless hours of practice he developed his own way to adapt his body to play the game he loved.

For fielding, Pete stripped out all the padding on his glove to make it light and easy to manage. After catching a ball he would raise the glove to his right stump letting the ball roll backwards out of the pocket, down his wrist and against his chest. He then pulled his fingers out of he glove, now clamped securely under his stump, and let the ball roll into his hand. Performed in one well-practiced motion it seemed to defy gravity and sportswriters all around the country made Pete demonstrate it in every town he passed through.

At the plate Pete utilized a 38-ounce bat, heavier than the norm. Holding the bat aloft with his one hand he left a space at the bottom of the bat where his missing right hand would normally have been. He get the bat in motion earlier than a two-handed player and later on in the big leagues this would lead to his downfall. But at a lower level of ball Pete could compensate successfully. He even worked out a way to control his bat in order to bunt - Pete was a very fast runner and he used this that speed to his advantage.

It's hard to say whether or not Pete would have been picked up by a minor league team had it not been for the war. So many players were in the service that the low minors were signing anything they could get their hands on, only to see them slip away as the majors siphoned off the best and then just as fast would in turn lose them to the draft. With only one arm, Pete wasn't going overseas and he first broke into organized ball with the Three Rivers Renards of the Canadian-American League in 1942. Batting a staggering .381 he was bought by the AAA Toronto Maple Leafs but was sold because of an incident that occurred during spring training: Hiding behind a potted plant in the lobby of the Leaf's hotel, skipper Burleigh Grimes eavesdropped on Gray criticizing his management abilities.

Now property of the Memphis Chickasaws, Pete hit .289 and had only 8 errors for 1943. Not too bad but the next year he positively dominated the Southern Association by hitting .333, 21 doubles, 9 triples and even slugged 5 one-handed homers. He stole 68 bases and in the outfield his fielding percentage was a perfect 1.000. On top of that Pete won the league's MVP Award. A side-show? Yeah, but he also proved he could play ball professionally. An MVP Award is an MVP Award and they don't hand those things out for charity cases.

Now I can go one and easily turn this into a feel-good piece on Pete Gray's determination and how how he inspired countless disabled American servicemen returning from the war but that's not what I want to do. Baseball history is littered with testiments to Pete Gray's courage and determination. Hell, there was even a television movie about it. By the same token I can slip into socially-conscious spiel about how sick and twisted the racial sensitivities were at the time that when the lack of talent was so bad, Major League Baseball in all it's Jim Crow glory couldn't see to sign some of the hundreds of qualified blacks in the Negro Leagues. Instead they chose to utilize a 15 year-old kid (Cincinnati's Joe Nuxhall), a 36 year-old garbage man (Ed Boland of Washington), a one-legged war veteran (Bert Shepperd, again of Washington) and of course, a one-armed guy named Pete Gray.

Where I aim to take the rest of this story is to make the argument that The Brown's signing of Pete Gray in essence became the torpedo which sank the franchise.

The Browns that turned up for spring training was essentially the same team that won the league pennant the previous year. The common perception of the team was of one that was in perpetual shock of how far above their station they had come and that no one had even a slight glimpse of hope that the team would repeat in 1945. None of that is true. Through the long hard summer of '44 the Browns had been forged into a cohesive team. Because Luke Sewell had cleaned house when he took over as skipper, none of his players had gotten used to long futile careers with a bad team. The Browns of 1945 were eager youngsters and seasoned vets. They were winners and knew they were just as good or better than the rest of the American League. There was no reason they couldn't expect to repeat.

Enter Pete Gray. Maybe if he was a whole, healthy young ballplayer it would have gone easier. It's one thing to have a new young buck brought up to the big club fresh off of an MVP season in the minors. But this guy had one arm and along with that came the press freak show eager to cover the whole thing. For a bunch of guys serious about defending their pennant in a tough war year, a side-show was the last thing they needed.

If he sat on the bench or maybe just gave catching and throwing exhibitions during batting practice, maybe everything would have gone well. But Pete Gray was a St. Louis Brown for one reason only: to attract fans to the ballpark. And that wasn't going to happen with him riding the pines in the dugout. The Browns needed to play the guy.

Inserting a novelty into the lineup of the defending American League champions spelled trouble from the outset. The other guys knew Pete was there as a freak attraction. As major leaguers, they all knew that this wasn't no Southern Association and real pitching with real curveballs was going eat this guy alive. And the flawless motion that he used to field his position? To his teammates that added up to one thing: extra base hits for opposing batters. On top of all this, who was going to have to take a seat while the one-armed guy made history? Mike Kreevich, that's who.

Kreevich was a former White Sox prodigy who nearly drank himself out of the game only to find redemption on The Browns. He hit just over .300 in 1944 to lead the team and although he was up there in age, was still a valuable cog in The Browns machine. Still a heavy drinker, losing playing time to a one-armed guy just sent Kreevich spinning out of control. By being an everyday player helped keep Kreevich sober and responsible. Being platooned with Gray not only threw off his timing at the plate but took away the lifeline to sobriety he precariously clung to. The other players looked on in shock as management appeared to want to sacrifice their success on the field for some modest bump in attendance. The team's cohesiveness broke down.

As infielder Ellis Clary eloquently put it: "He screwed up the whole team. If he's playing, one of them two-armed guys is sitting in the dugout pissed off."

The press, used to poking fun at the Browns lowly status now turned the novelty of Pete Gray against them as well. How lousy are The Browns players that management has to dig down and come up with a cripple to play on the team? The rest of the team seethed with resentment as they tried to hold it together and win the pennant.

The race was pretty tight. Detroit won it all and while the Browns finished in 3rd place, they were only 6 game behind the Tigers. Pete Gray played in 77 games that season and batted .218. How much better could Mike Kreevich have done had he been the team's constant outfielder? We'll never know, but it's not that far of a jump to assume Kreevich's bat could have been the deciding factor in winning, say, 6 or 7 games that season. The same could be said for team spirit. How much of a difference did it make with the press side-show that surrounded Pete Gray. How much did it get in the heads of the players, knowing that management seemed to be sabotaging a pennant for box office success?

What the hell do I know? I'm just a simple artist born more than 25 years after the Browns won their only pennant. But I can say that things such as this really makes the game of baseball so fascinating to me, even after 40-something years on the planet. Just think about it - if the Browns had repeated in 1945, that could have signaled the resurgence of their team. Maybe they wouldn't surpass the Cards as St. Louis' favorite boys, but what if they stayed contenders? St. Louis had supported 2 teams for decades and with a decent record, who's to say support wouldn't dwindle away like it did when the team sank to the bottom of the standings and stayed there for the next 7 years. Look at Chicago. The Cubs and the White Sox exchanged seasons futility for decades and still attracted enough fans to continue sharing the same city. Philadelphia is another example. Both the A's and Phils stunk up their respective leagues for years, yet remained side-by-side residents of the same burg. Maybe it would have been another 2-team city that would have lost a team to Baltimore in 1954.

And just think about it: What would the San Diego Padres colors have been had the Browns stayed put? Things like that are likely to keep an avid baseball fan up at night with the night terrors...

Just to wrap this whole thing up, I don't want to overlook what an accomplishment it was for Pete Gray to make it to the big leagues. Sure, he was a gimmick used to attract fans, but he wasn't an Eddie Gaedel or a Jackie Mitchell. Pete really did hit .333 at Memphis and was MVP of the Southern Association. The man could play ball - just not at a major league level. As an inspiration to people all over the world, his story is a life lesson in perseverance and for that I tip my well-worn Cooperstown Ball Cap 1944 St. Louis Browns cap to him!

If you'd like to read the best book on the 1944 Browns and their pennant winning season get yourself a copy of David Alan Heller's book "As Good As It Got." Heller does a hell of a job profiling all the players on this fascinating team, puts wartime baseball in perspective and takes you through the entire '44 season, demonstrating how this remarkable team captured their one and only pennant.

80. Farmer Dean: His Own Meal Ticket

2011-06-15T21:50:00.000-07:00

Let me first start out by saying that what follows is a true story - it might not read like it is, but it's all taken from a wide variety of period newspapers and wire services from February to April, 1935... While digging up old newspaper articles on the Tokyo Giants games against the Pacific Coast League teams during the spring of 1935, I happened upon one of those crazy characters that only baseball seems to attract: Oscar "Farmer" Dean. The first mention was of the Great Farmer Dean being slated to pitch against the Giants. The name sounded interesting and I made a note of it. Later I noticed his name kept popping up as I read the west coast newspapers from the spring of that year. When I found a mention of his eating capacity, I decide I had to dig deeper. Who was this guy? The truth was weirder that I ever imagined...

Out of thousands of baseball hopefuls who turned up at spring training camps all across America trying to escape the grips of the great depression, "Farmer" Dean quickly set himself apart from the pack. After writing to every club in the Pacific Coast League bragging of his unbridled talent, the Los Angeles Angels were the quickest on the draw and invited The Farmer to camp that spring. Even before he arrived the press was abuzz with anticipation of yet another great hurler with the "Dean" moniker.

In the previous year the brother duo of Dizzy and Paul Dean devastated the National League not only with their fastball but with the great copy their wild bragging and colloquial quotes brought. The Dean's won all 4 of the Cardinals victories in the '34 World Series and now there seemed to be yet another one of these "diamond in the rough's" out there. The aspiring pitcher that reported to the Angels camp on February 11th wasn't a spring chicken - he claimed to be 23 but looked like he was well into his mid-30's, six foot four and over 190 lbs. When not in uniform, Farmer wore an old suit of overalls complete with a sign sewn on the back declaring "I Am Farmer Dean." And just in case you failed to take notice of all that, he brought along his own agent/manager, Herb Levine, to make sure you did. The beat writers ate this stuff up.

While most of the Angels' hopefuls tried their damnest to distinguish themselves on the field, Farmer Dean made headlines with his prodigious apatite. His relentless assaults on the team's hotel restaurant became legendary - eating 2 steaks before morning workout became his routine. While others threw the ball around or worked on their curve ball, Farmer Dean held court, giving the eager sportswriters plenty of copy for their papers.

He was was fresh out of the U.S. Army, he said, where he learned how to pitch while posted at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. "My best throws are my cannon and submarine throws" the Antelope Valley resident said. While he claimed to be of no blood relation to the Cardinals' two sibling superstars, Dizzy and Paul Dean, The Farmer admitted that he possessed the same level of ability, and while he'd never seen either one in person, by reading about them he could confidently state they "haven't anything on me." Apparently The Farmer could do the the Dean's of St. Louis one better: he claimed he was such a good hitter he played outfield when he wasn't mowing 'em down with that fire ball of his.

Apparently the Angels management didn't think the same way because after a week Farmer Dean and his agent/manager Herb Levine were cut loose.

On February 19th sports pages across the country carried the UP article exclaiming Farmer Dean's signing by the Mission Reds of San Francisco. The Reds sent Dean a contract and told him to travel north to Marysville, California where the Mission team was opening their training camp on February 25th. The Red's manager, Gabby Street, who a few years earlier was Dizzy Dean's catcher on the Cardinals, optimistically told the press: "He's just like Dizzy when he signed with the Cards" and The Farmer himself added confidently "I'll win 20 games in this league."

The article also went on to list Farmer Dean's weight as 200lbs.

Before the Reds even opened the doors to their spring training camp in Marysville, Farmer Dean was a local superstar: he was presented with the key to the city. Earlier in the month the Reds' Bay area rivals, The Oakland Oaks, were chastised in their local newspapers for not being quick enough in responding to The Farmer's letter of introduction and letting him slip away to the Angels. Now that he turned up in the rival Reds' camp made it even harder for the Oaks fans to take.

The reporters who covered the Reds badgered manager Gabby Street for updates on the team's prized rookie. "Well, I'll tell you. The big fella has a lot of color and is sure attracting a lot of attention. He's plenty big, says he can pitch and certainly acts the part of a fellow looking to make good. He talks a great game and he eats like a big leaguer." Street went on to contrast The Farmer with Dizzy, saying The Farmer was more modest because when asked how many games he planned on winning that year said: "I guess about twenty games would be enough for the first year, eh Sarge?"

The Sarge promised to put The Farmer through a rigorous tryout to determine the full extent of the rookies prodigious talent. "I will find out mighty quick if this big boy has anything of value in a baseball way. What a card he will be if he can really pitch. If he can't, the Mission club will be out the price of his car fare and the meals he absorbed."

On the afternoon of Saturday, March 2nd Gabby Street handed the The Farmer the ball to see what he could do in a game situation. The Mission Reds faced the touring Tokyo Giants in the first of a series of games they scheduled against Pacific Coast League teams. The Tokyo Giants were a young team, mostly made up of college stars and featured the schoolboy sensation, Eiji Sawamura who made history that winter when he struck out Gehringer, Ruth, Gehrig, and Foxx in succession during an exhibition game in Japan. Before the game Dean went over the pitches he planned on unleashing that afternoon: "I got a submarine ball and a fire ball, but my fire ball is the best. It starts out fast and leaves a smoke screen as it curls up."

The Farmer, employing a novel submarine-style pitching motion shut out the Tokyo Giants for 2 innings until the roof caved in during the 3rd. Slapping him around for 6 runs, Tokyo knocked him out of the box on the way to a 12-5 win.

Obviously choosing to focus on only the first 3 innings of that afternoon's game, Dean went out on the town celebrating. By the time he meandered into the team's hotel, the Reds' president, Joe Bearwald, confronted his star hurler about breaking training rules. An indignant Dean declared; "I am a farmer, and Saturday is farmer's night. I do not care to retire now." The two men began a heated exchange but Bearwald had the last word: "You're fired."

The next morning as The Farmer and his agent/manager Herb Levine packed up their stuff, the Reds' manager Gabby Street spoke to the shocked press: "Farmer Dean didn't have a thing as a chucker." Dean had a lot of color he said, "but nothing on the ball."

At a rival meeting of the scribes, no doubt set up by agent/manager Levine, The Farmer gave his side of the story. "I walked out on The Missions because that old miser Joe Bearwald complained because I ate two steaks for dinner." The most famous pitcher in the Pacific Coast League was now free to take his talents elsewhere.

On March 5th he suddenly turned up in Santa Barbara and presented himself to the Seattle Indians owner Bill Klepper. At a press conference the following day Dean reported that Klepper and the Indians promised him "plenty of food" and promptly proved the point by devouring 2 full steaks before making his way to the field for practice. The newspapers described him as "... the 205lb Dean..."

Now boasting that he would win 25 games for Seattle this season, The Farmer was treated to a rigorous running regimen by the Indian's manager Dutch Reuther. Seeing as he put away 2 steaks, Reuther had Dean run around the field for 3 hours. The following morning the press reported seeing The Farmer only put away one steak at breakfast. Ruether adjusted his training regimen accordingly and made Dean run for only one hour. He was yet to appear in a game claiming the cards were not right yet. Farmer Dean, you see, consulted his horoscope before every game and if the stars were not favorable, Dean didn't pitch.

The newspaper now all seemed to focus on The Farmer's appetite instead of his fire ball. One paper claimed he ate "20 hot cakes every morning" and "carries with him a loaf of french bread and a roll of bologna sausage in a paper bag" to stave off hunger between meals. At the end of March he challenged teammate and the reining Indians eating champ, Mike Hunt, to an eating contest. The Farmer packed in "eight pounds of hamburger steak, three plates of potatoes and then ripped a beefsteak apart" on the way to thrashing Hunt and claiming the team title. After the crumbs settled Dean told manager Reuther that if they had a better class of steak he could really show 'em how to eat. Incredulous, Reuther called his bluff and ordered the pitcher a fresh T-bone. 10 minutes later it was gone.

Indians owner Bill Klepper declared: "if he could play ball like he can eat he'd be worth as much as Dizzy Dean."

The last traces I can find of The Farmer is at the end of March where the UP syndicated a photograph of Dean sitting awkwardly on the ground in front of the Indians dugout eating an impressive-looking sandwich. The supplied caption notes that to construct the sandwich he is consuming "...required 14 inches of bologna and a loaf of bread." He is also noted as being: "6' - 4" and 220lbs."

So who was Farmer Dean? There is no other mention of him after April 2nd of 1935. A teammate on the Indians did say that he had known Dean under a different name back on an unnamed Eastern team and that he was 35, not 23 as claimed. But he never gave the man's former name. Another clue I found was a mention of him being a resident of Lancaster, California. Then I found it. In a Los Angeles Times article, back when the L.A. Times still employed reporters that actually reported, writer Bob Ray's secret contacts told him that Oscar "Farmer" Dean's real name was "West" and that he once played with a team in the now-defunct Eastern League. Going through all the records found on Baseball-Reference.com I found no "West" who played in the Eastern League that would fit his age group (assuming he was born between 1900 and 1905). The only close fit I could see would be a Tommy West who played for the Lindale Pepperalls of the Georgia-Alabama League in 1930. The league collapsed following the 1930 season so it fits what was reported about Dean being out of a job after the folding of the league he played in. And taking into consideration that before showing up on the west coast he'd just served a 4 year hitch in the Army, that would fit into the timeline just fine. But this is all just a wild, though educated, guess on my part. So was this guy a real prospect or a publicity-hound trying to be his own meal-ticket? I'm guessing the latter and the teams in the Pacific Coast League played along. 1935 was one of the worst years of the depression and Americans grasped at any kind of distraction to keep their minds off their current predicament. If anything, Dean's romp through the P.C.L.'s spring training was beneficial to both himself and the league: the ever-hungry Dean gained in excess of 30lbs from free food and the Coast League gained national publicity and a much-needed boost to spring training attendance because of The Farmer and his personal publicity machine. I love the history of this game!

Note: I wasn't happy with the original drawing I did of The Farmer, he was too... animated. (You can still see the original version HERE on my facebook page) I decided to do a 2nd version showing the Ace Fire-baller Farmer Dean, staying out of the sun, contemplating what the afternoon's lunch menu may hold...

79. Willie Mays: Trenton Makes - The World Takes*

2011-06-06T20:03:00.000-07:00

* Slogan pained on the side of a railroad bridge as you enter Trenton, New Jersey.

When you're talking about baseball's first years of integration after Jackie Robinson, you always hear about the black players experiences with being accepted by the other players. Many of Jackie Robinson's new Brooklyn teammates simply ignored him. After Willard Brown hit the first homer by a black player in the American League, his teammate, whose bat Brown had borrowed, took it back and broke it in half so it couldn't be used again. And even though Bob Feller barnstormed with black players for years, that wasn't enough to make his Cleveland Indians treat Larry Doby like an equal when he joined their club in 1947.

I'm not trying to defend anyone's racial intolerance, but it was a different time back then and that must be taken into account. Because of segregation, most white players simply never even met a black man before, and unfortunately, lack of knowledge breeds ignorance. Besides the racial aspect, this was immediately following World War II and many older ballplayers were trying to win their old jobs back from their wartime replacements and now there was the added threat of talented black players competing for those same jobs. It is amazing when you think about how far and fast much of that sick discrimination evaporated, and it is probably due to simply being placed into an integrated environment for a period of time. Exposure does wonders as a cure for ignorance. Even a guy like Bobby Bragan, who was so adament about not playing with Robinson that he demanded a trade, quickly evolved into a minor league manager known for his special talent developing black and Latino players. Sure there were still shit-kicker racists around, but by 1955 those guys were a low-class minority. Even the Dodgers who were well stocked with southern ballplayers quickly accepted Jackie Robinson when they were witness to immense his talent and drive to win.

It is during these breakthrough years, 1946-52, that lines were drawn and some players took a stand for what was right. Brooklyn's Pee Wee Reese, a southerner, made a small but bold statement during batting practice in Cincinnati when he posed with a his arm around Robinson's shoulder. That simple gesture did more to not only silence the great majority of bigots, but at the same time proved to Robinson that he was a part of the team. It's so much easier to focus on the seedier and distasteful events instead of the positive ones that in the long run made much more of a difference. Unlike the much reported Reese-Robinson incident, most of those stories remain forgotten or anonymous, but one I'm about to relate isn't, because it happened to a future Hall of Famer...

The 20 year-old kid who joined the class B Trenton Giants in the spring of 1950 was already a seasoned veteran. He'd put in 2 solid seasons with Birmingham, including their 1948 team which won the league championship. Brought up by his ballplaying father and tutored by some of the best veteran players around, this kid was as solid a prospect you could get and the New York Giants knew they were lucky to have scored such a talent-in-the-making. He was fast, smart and aggressive on the base paths, a solid hitter and his fielding was just inspiring to watch. He had such an accurate and powerful arm that the Giants organization's file on the kid included a note that said if his hitting didn't pan out, he could be easily adapted to become a starting pitcher. Yep, this kid had it all and then some.

The Giants organization would have liked to start him a little higher up their food chain except for one major logistical problem - this particular player was black. In 1950 there wasn't a whole lot of minor league teams that wanted to be at the forefront of the integration of profession baseball, even if the player was to become one of the greatest centerfielder's the game has ever known - Willie Mays.

Because of his youth and the team's decision to develop him gradually, the Giants didn't want to start him at the top, so their two AAA ballclubs at Jersey City and Minneapolis were off the table. Their first inclination was to send him to the Sioux City Soos of the Western League, but Sioux City had just went through a large racial disturbance - a Native American had been buried in the city's whites-only cemetery and a whole lot of people were pissed off. Surely that wasn't the right atmosphere to introduce the team's first black player. The Jacksonville Tars of the Southern League was the same level of ball as Sioux City, but the Southern league is, well, the Southern League, and that was out of the question for now. One rung below Sioux City and Jacksonville was the Trenton Giants of the Interstate League. With the exception of one team that was based in Maryland, all the leagues' teams were in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, places thought to be more tolerant of a black ballplayer. The only rub was that it was Class B ball, the equivalent of today's single A classification. Class B ball was a much lower level than Mays' former Negro League team, the Birmingham Black Barons. It was an unintended insult to Mays, but there really wasn't any other options. Trenton it was.

Mays joined the club on the road in Hagerstown, Maryland. Ed Monahan, a pitcher with Trenton, met Willie's train at the station and took him to the stadium where the game was almost over. While the night game played out its final innings, Willie drew his uniform and cap from the clubhouse man and joined the team in the dugout. The Giants manager Frank "Chick" Genovese was a career minor leaguer who never made it all the way to the bigs. Managing was his way of staying in the game and as an outfielder himself, he must have drooled over the organization's scouting reports on this new kid. When Mays introduced himself to Genovese, the skipper told the kid that starting tomorrow, he was the new centerfielder. After the game the team headed to their hotel but Mays was taken aside and told that he was to stay at a black-owned hotel, away from his white teammates. Already confused and insulted by having to play in a league that was a lower level of play than the Black Barons, now he was being separated from his teammates. Willie Mays' first taste of "organized" baseball wasn't going down too well.

Mays was booked into The Harmon Hotel in Hagerstown's colored neighborhood. Although he'd stayed exclusively at segregated hotels while with the Black Barons, the whole team had always stayed together. The camaraderie of lodging with your teammates helped build the team spirit and created a bond between players that showed in their play on the field. Now here on his first day Willie was isolated from his new team. Disappointed and angry as he was, Mays was from the south, was used to Jim Crow and quietly accepted his circumstances. He walked over to The Harmon, checked into his 3rd floor room and unpacked.

Unbeknown to Mays, the rest of the Trenton Giants were pissed. Suddenly having a black player thrust onto their team really brought out deep emotions in many of the Giants players. As the evening wore on, the simmering anger of the young players boiled over into action.

At midnight five of his new teammates left their hotel and trekked into Hagerstown's colored neighborhood. Fueled by anger and a deep feeling of what they thought was right, they climbed up The Harmon Hotel's fire escape and found the window of Willie's room. Huddled in the darkness they rapped on the glass. What must have been a hesitant Mays opened the window.

Willie Mays said later the midnight visitors wanted to “to check whether I was okay.” See, the Trenton teammates weren't angry about Willie's skin color, they were angered by the way he was forced to accept different accommodations than his teammates. To these young players, they were all ballplayers now, teammates. After being reassured the new guy was indeed ok, three of the players spent the night sacked out on the floor, returning to the team's white hotel in the morning.

It was this unexpected act of solidarity that instantly made Mays feel accepted and part of his new team and enabled him to endure all the sick heckling and actions he faced in the coming months. Whether the opposition liked it or not, Willie Mays was member of the Trenton Giants now.

Mays was right in thinking the Interstate League was below his level of play - he clipped the leagues pitching for a .353 average, second best in the circuit that year. Already an amazing outfielder, Trenton's manager, "Chick" Genovese, taught Mays the basket catch that he would soon make his trademark and Willie Mays was off to a long career that would see him become one of the most revered stars of the game as well as one of the great pioneering players that integrated the game.

78. Laymon Yokely: The Sunday Pitcher

2011-06-02T09:58:00.001-07:00

When I first moved to Baltimore to attend college I quickly immersed myself in the city's rich baseball history. There was the colorful Old Orioles of the turn of the century with John McGraw, Wilbert Robinson, Hughie Jennings and Wee Willie Keeler; Jack Dunn's minor league juggernaut that unleashed the likes of Babe Ruth and Lefty Grove on the world and of course the great O's squads of the late 1960's and early 70's with Boog, Brooks and Frank. But I was more interested in the Negro League teams that called Charm City their home. Baltimore fielded two very competitive teams that for some reason never got their due place in blackball history. The later of the two teams was the Elite Giants which represented the city from 1938 to 1951 and launched the careers of future Brooklyn Dodgers' Roy Campanella, Joe Black and Junior Gilliam. The other Negro League team was the Baltimore Black Sox which operated from 1916 to 1934, though it was the only during the years 1923 to 1930 that the team was at what can be called a top-tier level. Asking any older person I ran across about these two teams brought me many great stories and led me to more people with even more memories who were willing to talk with the young punk white art student who knew more than he should about black baseball. I was fairly well read on the better players in blackball, but one name that always seemed to be mentioned with a sort of awe and reverence was a pitcher for the Black Sox named Laymon Yokely. I'd never heard of him, yet many of the oldsters I talked to compared him to Satchel Paige. He was what they all called a "Sunday Pitcher" - meaning he was such a big name that the team would pitch him on Sundays to ensure a big profit at the gate as well as an easy victory. I heard from more than a few that in the early 30's the Black Sox featured none other than a young Satchel Paige but he rode the bench because Yokely was considered his better. Quite a few of the old fellas I talked to told me about this epic series of games that took place after the World Series every year where major leaguers came to Baltimore and played against a black all-star team every weekend until it got too cold to play anymore. Jimmy Foxx, Lefty Grove, Hack Wilson, Moose Earnshaw... they said Laymon Yokely whipped them all. Hack Wilson was said to have handed Yokely his bat saying he didn't need it anymore after Yokely struck him out 3 times in a row. Hall Of Famer Leon Day told me he credited Yokely with giving him his start in professional baseball and everything he knew about pitching he'd learned from Yokely. Yokely? Who the hell was this Yokely guy?
I dove into newspaper micro film and found a few mentions of him, none in the white Baltimore Sun. This was the days before the internet and I was just a young college kid, so my research database was limited. I found that Yokely was the ace of the 1929 Baltimore Black Sox who won the Eastern Collored League pennant that year, but after that he kind of disappears except during the war when he reemerged on the staff of the Elite Giants for a year or two. It wasn't until John Holway published his book of interviews called "Blackball Tales" that I finally got the whole story on Laymon Yokely. Holway visited the aging ballplayer in 1969 and, as far as I can tell, gathered the only decent interview ever conducted with him.

He was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and attended Livingston College on a baseball scholarship. Yokely often found himself pitted against Bun Hayes from the rival J.C. Smith University. Their pitching duels became something of a spectacle and unfortunately for Yokely, Hayes usually came away the winner. Yokely was studying to be a minister but eventually gave it up to pursue pro ball when the Black Sox snapped up both him and his arch rival Bun Hayes in 1926.

The Black Sox team he joined was a collection of real rough and ready bruisers with sluggers like Crush Holloway and Jud Wilson. The team's ace Doc Sykes had just retired, leaving a big hole in the pitching staff. Young Yokely was worried about how he'd fit into the team and before travelling north he made the Black Sox guarantee a return ticket if he failed to make good. He needn't have worried, he threw harder than anyone else on the team and won his first game. The Black Sox's manager, Ben Taylor, told him after the game: "I guess we'll keep you."

Although you can't tell in period photographs, Yokely was big strapping fella, 200 pounds stretched out over a 6' - 2" frame. His wind-up was unique - instead of keeping his pitching hand with the ball hidden in his glove he'd swing the arm behind his back and then whip it around and release the pitch. Some said he did it to hide his pitch, others claimed the extra distance it took to whip his arm all the way around from behind his back gave him something extra on the ball. His contemporaries all remarked on his speed and the fact that his hands were so powerful that he could loosen the cover on the ball.

Although he was a bit wild when he came up from North Carolina, manager Ben Taylor made him practice throwing the ball over a matchbox placed on top of home plate, the time honored method used to hone a pitcher's aim. Practice sharpened his arm and harnessed his raw speed, but it was his deliberate coolness that put him over the top. Yokely didn't let anything rattle him, he was always calm as a cucumber. Didn't argue with umpires, didn't care if he was facing a .180 or a .350 hitter and never let a homer break his concentration. In fact he'd often doze off on the bench between innings and some say he probably suffered from a form of narcolepsy. His teammates had fun teasing him about his ability to fall asleep within minutes of boarding the team bus. Jake Stephens had a running bet with Yokely that he couldn't stay awake the entire trip from the team hotel to the ballpark. Stephens never lost a bet.

Now on to these mythical black-white showdowns that supposedly took place in the late 20's down in Baltimore. Did they really happen? Yes they did, and Yokely was The Man when it came time to facing those white big leaguers. Though Baltimore was a segregated and very racist town during the 1920's, these interracial games were extremely popular with both white and black fans and the big leaguers prized a spot on the roster because it meant a huge payday. Crowds of up to 10,000 packed into the dumpy Maryland Park to watch the hard-fought games. The black players got to show what they had against the best in the country and their team was carefully picked to make sure those big leaguers got the best the Negro Leagues had to offer. While some players like Lefty Grove still held racist prejudices, others like Jimmy Foxx became close friends with and vocal proponents of the Negro League players. Foxx and Oscar Charleston in particular maintained a long-term friendship begun during those late fall games in Baltimore.

The first black-white contest I could find with Yokely was a doubleheader from October 22, 1927. the Black Sox (with ringers from other teams) played the Merwin Jacobson All-Stars. Jacobson, while not a household name today, was in 1927 coming off a 2 year stint with Brooklyn, but he was a Baltimore favorite for the 6 prime years he spent playing for the Orioles during their dynasty years. Jacobson's team included the slugger Hack Wilson (Cubs), Chick Fewster (Pirates), Johnny Nuen (Tigers) and pitcher Bill Sherdel (Cardinals). The rest of the lineup was made up of players from the high minors. Yokely gave up 6 runs and was blasted out of the box in the third but the Black Sox came back to win 8-7. Yokely took the mound again for the second game but it was called after 2 inning due to darkness.

A couple weeks later the two teams played another doubleheader. This time the white team was augmented by the addition of shortstop Joe Boley and pitcher Eddie Rommel, stars of the Philadelphia Athletics. Yokely was on his game this time, striking out 6 and going the distance in a 7 to 6 win. Slugger Hack Wilson was 0 for 3 and Eddie Rommel took the loss. The second game was called in the middle of the third with the white all-stars ahead 4-0, due to darkness.

In partial records recovered Yokely is credited with a 15-7 record, best in the Eastern Colored League. He also lead the league in strikeouts. Overlooked is the fact that of the 20 games won by Baltimore, Yokely was the winning pitcher of 15 of them! As the leaves began to fall, the annual black-white series arrived and this year Philadelphia's slugger Jimmy Foxx and pitchers Lefty Grove, Eddie Rommel and Curly Ogden led the white all-stars. In the first meeting on October 14th, Lefty Grove, who was 24-8 that year, got creamed by the Black Sox 9-3. This was one of 3 games Grove lost to black teams and it offended him so much that later he claimed never to have played against blacks, ever.

The next day's doubleheader Yokely took the mound against Curly Ogden who won 15 games in the American League that season. In a well played pitchers duel, both Yokely and Ogden struck out 4, walked 3 and each gave up 4 hits. Jimmy Foxx smashed a terrific home run in the second but that was the only run the whites managed to score off Yokely as he won 2-1.

In the second game the white all-stars won 5-1. The Black Sox dropped both games of the following Sunday's doubleheader, losing a heartbreaker in the first game 6-5 on Biz Mackey's error and the second by a score of 8-5.

1929 was Laymon Yokely's finest as he went 19-11 and the Sox finally put all the pieces together. Powered by a bunch of highly competitive (and combative) players like Oliver Marcelle and Frank Warfield, the Black Sox finally had the right combination of offensive power and skilled defense and they cruised to the pennant. By now Yokely was the most popular Black Sox player and the team put him on the mound to increase attendance every chance it had. Crowds flocked to see the cool hurler. The white Baltimore Sun, which hardly ever acknowledged that black teams even existed, wrote admiringly of Yokely, calling the 20-year-old "...a splendid pitcher. He has a wide, sweeping motion, a deceptive crossfire ball and a curve that comes booming up to the plate with the same speed as his fastball." Besides winning 19 games, Yokely threw a no-hitter and performed the feat of winning both ends of a doubleheader not once, but twice.

As the season ended, the Black Sox geared up for their annual black-white games and 1929 was Laymon Yokely's year. The white all-stars this season were led by Chicago Cubs slugger Hack Wilson (coming off a .345/159 RBI season) and a contingent from the World Champion Philadelphia Athletics. In the 4 games Yokely beat Ed Rommel 5-2, Curly Ogden 8-3 and then Howard Ehmke 14-7. Black Sox hurler Scrip Lee shut out Ed Carroll 8-0 to take the series. Now Laymon Yokely was 5-0 against white major leaguers.

The next season the Black Sox management decided to strengthen their pitching staff and added a young phenom from down south, Satchel Paige. Even this early in his career Satch was fairly well known, but in the half season he spent in Baltimore he played second fiddle to Yokely. When the Black Sox trekked north to play doubleheader in Yankee Stadium, the first time black teams were allowed to use the ballpark, it was Yokely, not Satch, that got handed the ball. He won 5-2. He was the fan favorite and this in turn is what cause his downfall. Pitching constantly, Yokely was all used up by the middle of 1930.

The Baltimore Black Sox mirrored Yokely's decline. The depression was hard on attendance and most of the star players left for greener pastures. Yokely, still popular with the home crowd, held on for a few years before finally sliding down a notch to play for the semi-pro Baltimore Red Sox. He still had flashes of his old self like in 1932 when he came back to the Black Sox to pitch against his old college rival Bun Hayes who was with the Washington Pilots. He struck out 8 but allowed 11 hits in 6 innings before calling it a day. Yokely pulled it together for one more campaign when he went 13-5 for the Philadelphia Stars in 1936 but that was as good as it got. Trading on his well-known name he formed the popular Yokely All-Stars and barnstormed around the Baltimore area well into the late 1950's. After getting out of baseball he opened up "Yokely's Shine Parlor" on Baltimore's Pennsylvania Avenue, the heart of the cities black community.

It was there in that shine parlor in 1969 that historian John Holway interviewed the aging Black Sox pitcher, filling in the blank story of that Yokely guy everyone was telling me about...

Frameable Card Posters!

2011-05-30T11:17:00.000-07:00

Just what every home and office needs, 12" x 18" frameable prints of select illustrations from The Infinite Baseball Card Set! Each full color poster features 20 illustrations seen here on the Infinite Baseball Card Set, and a few that haven't seen the light of day until now. These look really sharp framed and hanging on a wall, I actually had some printed just for my own office and though others might like them as well. These are the first 3 sets of 20 that I could fill up, as there are more cards added to this site I will make another poster available. $25 each, postage included, or all 3 for $70, postage included. Now accepting pre-orders, they will be shipped the 2nd week of May.

77. George H.W. Bush: Yale's "Fancy Dan"

2011-05-21T10:37:00.000-07:00

The freshman who tried out for the baseball team at Yale in the Spring of 1947 wasn't your typical college kid. The 22 year-old was just recently discharged from the U.S. Navy where he spent the last 3 years on an aircraft carrier flying torpedo bombers against the Japanese. On one of his 58 combat missions, his Grumman Avenger was hit by flak and ignoring his burning engine, completed his bombing run before bailing out over the Pacific. His two other crew member killed, he floated on a raft alone for hours before a dramatic rescue by an American submarine. He was discharged in September with a Distinguished Flying Cross and three Air Medals, married his long-time girlfriend Barbara and entered Yale University and tried out for the baseball team, just like his father before him.

Under the coaching of former major leaguer Ethan Allen, George Bush became the Yale Bulldog's varsity first baseman. From the start he caused quite a stir because he fielded left-handed - an extreme rarity in the baseball world. By all accounts George was a flashy fielder - coach Allen was quoted as calling Bush "...a one-handed artist at first base." His offensive skills were another matter. In the 1947 season he is credited with a .239 average with a homer and a couple of doubles. The next year he did a little better, going .264 with 6 doubles, 2 triples and a single homer. Since first base is usually a spot where you put your big, slow-fielding slugger, the fact that Coach Allen left the mediocre-hitting Bush there as a starter speaks much to his defensive skills.

In Bush's first season with Yale, the team's record of 19-8 earned them the honor of playing in the very first college World Series. Held at Hyames Field in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the Ivy League Yale Bulldogs faced the University of California at Berkley Bears. UC's squad was led by its ace pitcher, Jackie Jensen, who later starred for the Boston Red Sox as an outfielder.

That Yale even made the series was quite an accomplishment. The Ivy League universities had once been a hot-bed of athletic ability, but in the years after the first world war more and more promising young athletes were able to attend state colleges and the former powerhouse schools like Yale, Princeton and Harvard no longer dominated collegiate sports.

The first College World Series was designed to be a best-of-three series. Major League Baseball commissioner Happy Chandler was on hand to throw out the first ball and the game was officiated by two umpires on loan from the major leagues. Yale led 4-2 through 7 innings until Coach Allen tripped over his own strategy. He had his pitcher intentionally walk the Bears' 8th place hitter to face pitcher Jackie Jensen. Normally a sound move as pitchers are generally not known for their hitting prowess, in this case it was a terrible over site as Jensen, the future American League MVP in 1958, tied the game. The Bears took the lead in the 8th and really put it to bed with an 11 run 9th inning.

Jackie Jensen took the mound for UC Berkley in the second game as well and was cruising along with a 7-2 lead when Yale came roaring back in the 6th and tied it up. The next inning bad fielding allowed the Bears to scratch out a run and they held on the win the game and World Series, 8-7.

It was a disappointing end to Yale's season, but like millions of baseball fans have muttered over the years, there's always next year, and the Bulldog's didn't disappoint.

In 1948, first baseman George Bush improved his hitting by over 20 points and his fielding continued to sparkle. Yale teammate Dick Tettlebach, who went on to play in the big leagues with the Yankees and Senators, called Bush's play at first base: "Absolutely superb. A real fancy Dan." Coach Ethan Allen, whose major league career in the 20's and 30's enabled him to observe up close some of the greatest first basemen of all-time, like Lou Gehrig and Bill Terry, said Bush was one of the best he'd ever seen.

During one game in Raleigh against North Carolina State he went 3 for 5 with a double and triple, accompanied by his usual first-rate defensive play. Walking off the field after the game a major league scout approached and inquired about George's interest in playing profession ball. This brush with the scout was as close to the big leagues as George would get as a player, but his 1948 season would be memorable in other ways.

The greatest baseball player of all-time, Babe Ruth, made the trek to Yale in the spring of that year to personally donate a signed copy of his autobiography to the University's library. George Bush, recently voted captain of Yale's ballclub, had the honor of accepting the book from the baseball legend. Years later Bush recalled his meeting with The Babe who was ravaged by the cancer that would shortly claim his life: "...he was dying. He was hoarse and could hardly talk. He kind of croaked when they set up the mike by the pitchers mound. It was tragic. He was hollow. His whole great shape was gaunt and hollowed out."

After going 20-7, The Bulldogs met another California team once again in Kalamazoo. This time it was the USC Trojans and the best-of-three series went the distance ending in another tough defeat for Yale. George Bush watched from the on-deck circle as the Bulldog's season ended on a rare triple play.

George Bush graduated from Yale that spring and went on to other things, though baseball always remained close to his heart. Each spring he tried to make it to an opening day game, alternating between leagues each year. When he took office as President of the United States in 1989, in the top drawer of his desk in the Oval Office was a well-oiled first baseman's mitt, just in case. To this day Bush loves to discuss his baseball career, but disputes his former coach's assessment of him as a "all-glove - no hit" player. Says Bush: "I think it was grossly unfair because I think my average was about .240 or .250 (actually .251). And I think if I were playing today in the bigs, I'd probably get about 8 million bucks a year for that."

His love of the game was passed down to his sons, and one, also named George, made his father proud by becoming part owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team. Though he tried out for, but failed to make the Yale baseball team like his Dad, he did follow in his footsteps by becoming President of the United States.

76. Cool Papa Bell: Mythbusting

2011-05-20T10:23:00.001-07:00

This week I wanted to feature a ballplayer that is in the next issue of 21 which will focus on the 1933 Pittsburgh Crawfords. The Craws were such a great team with no shortage of superstar players - Oscar Charleston, Satchel Paige, Judy Johnson, Ted Page... it was a veritable All-Star team (in fact 7 of the Crawfords were picked to play in the first Negro League East-West All-Star Game that year). The choice was difficult, but I decided to go with the man who seems to be at the center of some of the greatest myths and stories in baseball history.

Back before hard-core baseball researchers like Scott Simkus and Gary Ashwill started really getting the actual statistics on the Negro Leagues, the field of blackball was filled with wondrous stories of the mysterious players who played before Jackie Robinson. Robert Peterson's seminal book on the subject "Only The Ball Was White" started the whole modern era of Negro League research, followed up quickly by John Holway's still enjoyable and valuable books relating his interviews with early black players. This was the "dark ages" of Negro League research, way before computers and micro-film of defunct newspapers made research easier. The subject was wrapped in oral histories, passed down by players and fans from one generation to the next, like the Greek tales of the Gods were centuries before. There were no record books like the big leagues had and no coffee table picture books were available documenting these black players. As John Holway writes in the introduction to his book "Blackball Tales," in 1969 his research into the Negro Leagues took him naturally to the Baseball hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Asking to see the Hall's files on the Negro Leagues, be was disappointed to find its collection comprised of only a scorecard of the buffoonish Indianapolis Clowns and a Washington Post article on Josh Gibson written by... John Holway! The study of Negro League ball and other outsider teams and players have come a long way since then, but along with all the knowledge gained, we also lose much of the tall-taled fun that once encased blackball and separated itself from the cold, hard facts of organized baseball.

It was the Paul Bunyan-esque figures that originally attracted me to the Negro Leagues... there was the fella who was said to have hit 70 home runs in a season, a pitcher who during a Negro League World Series game had the bases loaded and called in his outfielders and struck out the side, and of course the guy who was said to be so fast he could turn the light switch off and be under the covers before the room went black.

These stories were so fascinating to me as a young teen that it made me search for more and more and that quest eventually turned into 25 plus years of researching the old Negro Leagues. The one dangerous part of learning more is sometimes the truth behind a story is not what you want to hear. The fella who supposedly hit 70 home runs in a season was Josh Gibson in 1931. No one denies Gibson was a superstar and he'd be worth his weight in gold had he been white, but the story of those 70 home runs was just that - a story. Phil Dixon wrote The Book on the famed '31 Grays and figured out he hit 40 round-trippers, but these were against ALL levels of competition from chintzy-little town teams to top-notch black clubs and white minor league ballclubs. The pitcher who called in his outfield and struck out the side with the bases loaded in a Negro World Series game? Of course that had to be Satchel Paige. The story was colorfully related many times by his teammate Buck O'Neil, later known as the elder statesman of blackball due to his longevity and featured place in Ken Burns' "Baseball" documentary. Unfortunately, it just didn't happen. Besides being untrue, the story in my opinion makes Satchel Paige, who may have been one the greatest pitchers of all-time, look like a careless fool. While Paige undoubtedly had fun on the mound and could showboat and trash-talk better than anyone else, he was also a true professional and in games that counted he would never have done such a risky thing as call in his outfielders.

So that brings us to the third story, the one about the guy who was so fast he could turn the light switch off and get under the covers before the room went black. That was none other than James "Cool Papa" Bell.

He was born down south in Starkesville, Mississippi, his father a black farmer and his mother an Oklahoma Indian. Bell learned baseball like most young boys, did but did not consider it as a career until he left home in 1920 to join his older brothers in St. Louis so he could go to high school - Starkesville didn't have any schools above 8th grade for Negros back then.

Once in St. Louis, Bell began pitching for the local Compton Hills Cubs where the professional St. Louis Stars noticed him. For $90 a month, Bell dropped out of high school and became their new left-handed pitcher. Armed with a repertoire of screwball, knuckler and curve, Bell gained his priceless nickname "Cool Papa" when with a game on the line, he struck out the great and fearsome Oscar Charleston. After the game Bell's manager Bill Gatewood called him "one cool papa" for not being rattled when facing one of the greatest clutch hitters of all time. Like all great nicknames, "Cool Papa" stuck to Bell like it was dipped in Super Glue.

A sore arm ended Bell's promising career on the mound, but he quickly adapted by teaching himself to hit from both sides of the plate and utilising his greatest asset - his speed.

See, Cool Papa was fast! The game as it was played back in the 1920's was much different than today. There was much more aggressive base running and stealing and the blackball version of the game was even faster paced that the white one. The St. Louis Stars developed into a dynasty in the late 1920's and Cool Papa was their lead-off hitter. He didn't have much power, but when he made contact with the ball he was off like a bullet. This quickness pushed his batting average above the .300 mark in most years, higher in many others. It's hard to say for sure, the research isn't complete yet, however Scott Simkus' work on the 1933 Crawfords attributes a .307 average in 63 league games against the best black players. In exhibitions against white major leaguers Bell is verified to have batted .391 - his speed working to his benefit when playing against guys who were not used to the aggressive base running the Negro League teams displayed.

His speed out of the box surprised even veteran players and it is no exaggeration that Bell could beat out a ball hit in the infield for a single. One proven story about Bell's base running skills and speed took place during an exhibition game against Bob Lemon's white all-star team in 1948. The Cardinal's Murray Dickson was on the mound and Bell singled. The next batter, Satchel Paige, bunted in a bunt-and-run play. Bell, who was running as the ball left Dickson's hand, watched as the catcher , pitcher and third baseman all left their positions to field the ball. As Bell reached second he saw that no one was covering third so he kept going. The ball, now fielded, was sent to first base and Bell, watching all this unfold, reached third. Seeing the catcher making his way to cover third leaving home plate uncovered, flew right by him and crossed the plate before anyone else knew what was happening.

What that story proves, besides giving proof to Cool Papa's speed on the base path, is that he not only was quick, but more importantly, he was smart. It takes a very observant man to assess the situation and not only adapt to it but think one or two steps in advance. In that game in 1948, Bell wasn't playing against a rinky-dink town team but against major league players. He also 43 years-old at the time!

As an outfielder, once again Bell used his great ability to adapt to master his position. His sore arm never healed and in order to play his centerfield position he again utilized his speed to his own advantage. Bell was able to race to and catch fly balls where average players would not be able to make the play. He got around his weakened arm by developing a quick release once in possession of the ball, getting the it back to the infield faster as fast as most players who could rely on their powerful arms to get the ball there.

In our upcoming edition of 21 featuring the 1933 Pittsburgh Crawfords, Scott Simkus attributes Bell with only 2 errors during the '33 season, a cool .980 fielding percentage. In 63 verified Negro National League games that season, Simkus also recorded 12 stolen bases for Bell. 12 is a long way from the 175 he claimed to have stolen in 1933, but again these 12 were in league games against top black teams and at the same token, steals were not recorded very diligently at the time. So while it is highly unlikely Bell stole 175 bases in 1933, he probably stole more than 12 in the 63 league games and it is a given that he swiped plenty more while playing against town teams and amateur clubs that summer.

So how fast was Bell? Supposedly he was once clocked at running the bases in 11 seconds. The Baseball Hall Of Fame reportedly has some kind of documentation on this provided by Cool Papa's daughter, but I have been unable to find substantial proof of this. The official record, set in 1932 by Evar Swanson of the Columbus Red Birds, is 13.2 seconds. Official record or not, Bell was fast. While I was unable to find that all-important truth, there is something that may help validate his reputation as the fastest man in baseball. Olympian Jesse Owens was acknowledged to be the fastest man alive in the years leading up to World War II. Although he was the star of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the 4 gold medals he won didn't put food on the table so he often toured with Negro League teams, running pre-game exhibitions against local runners and sometimes even horses. On several occasions Bell's team played against a team Owens was with and each time the Olympian declined to race against Bell - as far as I can tell the only person he refused the opportunity to race. This speaks loudly of Bell's speed at the time. Owens, who was racing against horses for God's sake, was worried about losing a race to Bell!

So anyway, some tales about Bell were unfortunately not true (like the one where he hit a single, only to be called out when the ball he hit struck him in the keister as he slid into second), or there just isn't any documented proof (running the bases in 11 seconds). But wait, what about being so fast he could turn the light switch off and be under the covers before the room went black?

That one was one of Satchel Paige's favorite stories to tell and was one of the cornerstones of the mythology that encased blackball in the "dark ages." The way Paige told it, Bell showed how fast he was by the seemingly impossible act of being quicker than light-speed. Now that is a story that has to be false, right? Wrong. Back during their days with the Crawfords, Cool Papa and Satch were roommates on the road. Bell, who wasn't anywhere near the night owl Paige was, was in his hotel room one night when he noticed that the light switch on the wall had a short. It took a few seconds between the switch being flipped and the light actually going off. Sensing a great opportunity to mess with Satchel, Bell waited up for his roommate to return from a night on the town. When he came back, Cool Papa asked Satch if he thought he was fast. Satch of course said yes. Was he so fast he could get into bed before the room went black? Satch was sceptical, and Bell got up out of bed to prove it. Hitting the switch, Bell jumped into bed and under the covers as the room went dark, leaving Satchel standing in the dark, for once, speechless...

See Cool Papa and the rest of his teammates on the 1933 Crawfords in the next issue of 21: The Illustrated Journal of Outsider Baseball coming soon...

75. Guy Zinn: Going Rogue

2011-05-13T09:42:00.000-07:00

There was some problems with Blogger yesterday and my last post on Guy Zinn was wiped off the face of the earth, so here it is again...

After finally completing the design of the next issue of 21: The Illustrated Journal of Outsider Baseball in a coffee-fueled Jack Kerouac-like marathon work session, I was in the process of saving the file to my online back up when my screen went blue. Now I'm computer literate enough to know that blue is bad and that field diagnosis was confirmed when I took the machine to a tech guy. I spent a few agonizing days waiting to hear if the file that held the new 21 issue could be salvaged and was relieved to hear that it was. So after buying a whole new machine and all the accompanying software, I am back up and running. So why do I share my problems with you? Well, I was unable to write a good story this week for this site. Following up Bill Staples' great Kenichi Zenimura story would have been hard enough, but I thought I'd throw out the story of a fella I found while researching the first issue of 21, Guy Zinn...

Prior to 1914, when a major league team sent a player down to the minor leagues there was nothing the player could do about it unless he wanted to be blacklisted from organized baseball forever. But in the winter of 1914 when Guy Zinn found out the Boston Braves had sold him to Louisville, he never showed up. He went rogue.

Founded in 1913 as an unaffiliated minor league, the Federal League emerged the next year as an aspiring third major league. The 8 team league strategically placed their clubs all around the eastern half of the country, selecting major league cities like Chicago, Brooklyn, St. Louis and Pittsburgh as well as the big minor league markets of Baltimore, Indianapolis, Kansas City and Buffalo. The league then commenced a raiding spree on the major leagues. Aging and underpaid stars like Three-Finger Brown, Germany Schaefer and Eddie Plank joined viable young talent like Benny Kaugh and Ed Rouch. Many other stars of both major leagues used the threat of signing with the Federals as leverage to get better pay. For a veteran like Guy Zinn, the Federal League was a way to hold on to the dream.

Born in Holbrook, West Virginia, Zinn started out in the local Pennsylvania-West Virginia League in 1909 and quickly worked his way up through Macon, Memphis, Toledo and Altoona before he was signed by the New York Highlanders, now known as the Yankees. The young outfielder batted only .148 in 9 games during the 1911 season but he made the starting lineup the following year. Batting leadoff on Opening Day in Boston, Zinn became the first batter ever to step up to the plate in Fenway Park. After drawing a walk he later scored a run, also becoming the first player to score a run at Fenway. On August 15, 1912 the speedy Zinn made a name for himself again by stealing home twice in one game, a record that has been equalled 10 times but never surpassed. He also pounded a team record 6 home runs earning himself the formidable nickname “The Gunner”. Despite his memorable season, New York sold him to the Rochester Hustlers of the International League. Although the International League was the highest minor league at the time, it was still the minors. A disappointed Zinn batted .287 and hit 4 home runs. The Boston Braves noticed and purchased his contract at the tail end of the 1913 season. Guy batted .297 in 36 games including 8 doubles 2 triples and a home run but during the winter break he found out he had been sent down to the minors again, this time to Louisville.

Baltimore of the Federal League eagerly signed the proven Zinn. The Terrapins were heavily favored to win the pennant and they started out strong, outdrawing the established Baltimore Orioles so much that they were forced to sell their biggest star, 19 year-old pitcher Babe Ruth, and relocate to another city. The Gunner started great as well but then after batting .280 with 10 doubles, 6 triples and 4 homers as well as 6 steals, he broke his ankle running the bases. The team tanked during the second half and finished a disappointing third. Zinn recovered and the next year hit .269 and had 18 doubles, 3 triples and 5 homers despite the Terrapins finishing dead last in the league. But the league’s days were numbered.

Baltimore as well as the rest of the club’s attendance had dropped substantially and the Federal League finished the season in the red. The Major Leagues recognized victory over the upstart league but made a few concessions to some of the Federal League club owners: St. Louis Terriers owner Phil Ball purchased the St. Louis Browns while Chicago Whales owner Charles Weeghman was allowed to buy the Chicago Cubs. Weeghman moved the Cubs into the more modern stadium he had built for the Whales which years later would be known as Wrigley Field. The American and National Leagues skimmed off the best of the Federal League’s talent and cast adrift the remaining players.

With the demise of the Federal League, the aging Zinn bumped around the minors again, stopping off at Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, New Orleans, Louisville, Bridgeport, Newark, Jersey City and finally Hamilton, Ontario. He retired in 1922 and returned to his family in West Virginia.

Now go back up your files!

74. Kenichi Zenimura: U.S.-Japanese Baseball Ambassador

2011-04-29T10:10:00.000-07:00

In honor of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month (May) our current feature is on Japanese American Baseball Pioneer, Kenichi Zenimura (1900-1968). While Jackie Robinson and the Negro Leagues have been well documented, few baseball fans know about the Japanese American Nisei Leagues, or of Zenimura, their most influential figure. A phenomenal player who excelled at all nine positions, Zenimura possessed a gift for using the game to transcend the ignorance and intolerance of his era. As a player, captain, and manager, he worked tirelessly to promote Japanese American baseball, leading goodwill trips to Asia, helping to negotiate tours of Japan by Negro League all-stars and Babe Ruth, and establishing a 32-team league behind the barbed wire of Arizona’s Gila River Internment Camp during World War II.

“Kenichi Zenimura, Japanese American Baseball Pioneer” (McFarland 2011) is a new book by SABR member Bill Staples, Jr. With a foreword by Don Wakamatsu, the first Asian-American manager in MLB history, this biography of the "Father of Japanese-American Baseball" delivers a thorough and fascinating account of Zenimura’s life. In anticipation of the book’s release in June, Staples shares a summary of one of the most under-appreciated aspect of Zenimura’s career, and that of Japanese American baseball in general – the important role played in pre-war U.S.-Japanese baseball relations.

The 1922 MLB Tour to Japan: A Blow to American Sportsmanship
In the fall of 1922 Major League Baseball announced that it was sending a team of all-stars to tour Japan. Among the stars selected were Luke Sewell (Indians, c), Waite Hoyt (Yankees, p), Irish Meusel (Giants, of), George “High-Pockets” Kelley (Giants, 1b) and Casey Stengel (Giants, of).[1] The tour was led by Herb Hunter and was the brainchild of American League Commissioner Ban Johnson, who said, “Perhaps someday we will have the Champions of America meeting the winners of the Japanese series in a real world’s series. This may be my dream, but it is a dream I shall cherish until it materializes.”[2]

On October 14, 1922, Herb Hunter’s all-star club and a young Kenichi Zenimura were literally two ships passing in the night. At that same time that the all-stars were heading West across the Pacific, young Zenimura was returning from Japan where he spent several months coaching baseball at Koryo High School. The Koryo team roster included his cousin Tatsumi Zenimura, outfielder and future Meiji University team captain, and Kisaku Kato, future player and manager for Nankai of the Nippon Professional Baseball league.[3]

Zenimura was born in Hiroshima in 1900, moved to Honolulu in 1907, and as a young man moved to the U.S. mainland after visiting relatives in Fresno. He arrived in 1920 and immediately assumed a leadership role with the nascent Fresno Athletic Club. While he was away coaching at Koryo, the Seattle Asahi won the 1922 West Coast Japanese baseball championship and the rights to represent the U.S. during a tour of Japan in 1923. Zeni had devised a plan to bolster the talent of his club to claim the West Coast Japanese Baseball championship from Seattle. The plan required another trip back to Japan and then on to Hawaii to recruit his former Island teammates to join him on the mainland in California.

Back in Japan, the 1922 MLB All-Stars took on and defeated every college, industrial and amateur team the country had to offer – except one. On November 23, Herb Hunter’s men lost 9 to 3 to the amateur Mita Club, led by pitcher Michimaro Ono.[4] On the surface, one would think that the Mita Club and fans would be happy with the victory over the Americans, but they were not. Reports out of Japan explained why:

America's reputation for sportsmanship suffered a severe blow when the American baseballers threw away Sunday's came to the Mita local nine, which is strong nationally, but obviously no match for the American professionals … The general opinion was frankly expressed that the Americans dropped the frame for advertising purposes, anticipating increased gate receipts later at Osaka and other parts … The Tokio Asahi expressed the disappointment, “We welcomed the American team because we thought they were gentlemanly and sportsmanlike. They have now shown themselves to be full of the mean professional spirit. Japanese baseball followers are not foolish enough to believe they tried to beat Mita … they disappointed our hopes and left an unpleasant impression upon us.”[5]

Losing pitcher Waite Hoyt would later explain that he and his teammates were just “foolin’ around” on the field and meant no disrespect to their Japanese hosts. Nonetheless, the damage was done. As a result of the All-Stars thrown-game fiasco – and perhaps other factors such as the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake in Japan, and restrictive post-season play policies established by Commissioner Landis – no major league team would tour Japan for another eight years. (Note: Ty Cobb did tour Japan in 1928, however it was as an individual and not as a member of an MLB team tour.)

Filling the MLB Void: The Nisei and Negro Leagues Step Up to the Plate
This eight-year (1923-1931) major league void was proudly filled by Zenimura and his West Coast Nisei League peers. Ironically though, just as Zenimura and his teammates were about to enter the role of goodwill baseball ambassadors to Japan, on November 13, 1922 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Ozawa v. U.S. to reaffirm the ban on Japanese immigrants becoming naturalized U.S. citizens.[6] First-generation Japanese Americans, or Isseis like Zenimura, would have to wait another 30 years for the opportunity to call the United States of America their true home. Despite the ruling, Issei proudly represented their adopted country during several tours back to Japan. Specifically, during the eight year MLB-team void, Japanese American teams barnstormed the land of their ancestors approximately ten times, with Zenimura involved in four of the tours (1924, 1927, 1931 and 1937). The following is a comparison of pre-WWII tours to Japan by major leaguers and that of Nisei and Negro Leaguers:

MLB Tours to Japan, Pre-WWII
1908 Reach All-Americans
1913 MLB Giants-White Sox
1920 MLB All-Stars
1922 MLB All-Stars
1928 Ty Cobb (MLB exhibition)
1931 MLB All-Stars (Gehrig, O'Doul)
1934 MLB All-Stars (Ruth, Gehrig)

Nisei-Negro Leagues Baseball Tours to Japan, Pre-WWII
1907 St. Louis-Hawaii
1914 Seattle Asahi
1915 Honolulu Asahi
1915 Seattle Asahi
1918 Seattle Asahi
1920 Honolulu Asahi
1920 Seattle Asahi
1921 Hawaii All-Stars
1921 Seattle Asahi
1921 Vancouver Asahi
1923 Seattle Asahi
1924 Fresno Athletic Club*
1925 San Jose Asahi
1925 Sacramento Nippons
1926 Honolulu Asahi
1927 Aratani Guadalupe Packers
1927 Fresno Athletic Club*
1927 Philadelphia Royal Giants (Negro Leagues)
1928 Stockton Yamato
1931 Kono Alameda All-Stars*
1931 Los Angeles Nippon
1931-32 Philadelphia Royal Giants (Negro Leagues)
1933 Seattle Taiyos
1935 Nipponese All-Stars
1937 Kono Alameda All-Stars*
1940 Honolulu Asahi

*Note: Zenimura participated in the 1924, 1927 and 1937 tours, and coached the 1931 Kono Alameda All-Star players prior to their tour.

Debating the Birth of Pro Ball in Japan
The Nippon Professional Baseball league was established in 1936. Many baseball historians credit the famous 1934 MLB tour with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig as the primary inspiration for the start of the first professional league in Japan. However, knowing what we know now about the role of Nisei and Negro Leagues ball clubs and their tireless efforts to export the American style of play before WWII, we now see that the 1934 MLB tour was simply the capstone for building professional baseball in Japan, and not the foundation.

In fact, in the book Gentle Black Giants, Japanese author and historian Kazuo Sayama credits the 1927 tour, especially Mackey and his Philadelphia Royal Giants teammates, as the inspiration for the start of professional baseball in Japan in 1936.[7] Sayama states that Japanese players and spectators knew about the racial segregation in professional sports in America and understood that, although they could not play in the Major League, they were as good as, or even better than, the major league players. Sabur Yokozawa, a Japanese player, later said how the Royal Giants played each game gentlemanly, with warm pedagogical thoughtfulness to the inexperienced Japanese players, while the All-American teams (of 1931 and 1934) sometimes treated the Japanese players with entertaining contempt during the actual games.[8]

Not all researchers agree with Sayama's strong sentiment, but the consensus is this – the 1927 Goodwill Tours of the Philadelphia Royal Giants and Fresno Athletic Club are much more significant than the footnote status they receive in baseball history books. During the 80th anniversary of the 1927 tours, the Nisei Baseball Research Project (niseibaseball.com) told MLB.com that the intent in showcasing the role of Japanese Americans and the Negro League all-stars was not to take credit away from the major league tours but instead to “broaden the understanding that there are more ambassadors who built that (U.S.-Japan baseball) bridge.”[9]

After the end of WWII, Zenimura offered advice to his players that reflects a key lesson he learned during his goodwill tours to Japan during the 1920s and 30s. “Try to speed up the mutual feeling between the Americans and Japanese,” Zenimura said. “It is much easier to make efforts of starting a better understanding between us in the field of sports than trying to talk your way through the rough spots." Spoken like a true diplomat.

To learn more about Zenimura’s role as a global baseball pioneer and passionate U.S.-Japan ambassador, visit www.zenimura.com.

Praise for the book:

Kenichi Zenimura, Japanese American Baseball Pioneer by Bill Staples, Jr. Foreword by Don Wakamatsu

Bill Staples, Jr. is a dedicated baseball historian, author and a meticulous researcher who utilizes twenty-first century technology to root out the most obscure facts about his subjects. His work on Kenichi Zenimura is a groundbreaking effort. –William F. McNeil, baseball historian, author, Sporting News-SABR Research Award Winner (2007), Five-time recipient of the Robert Peterson Award

Staples’ tireless research and love for the game has resulted in "Kenichi Zenimura, Japanese American Baseball Pioneer,” one of the great untold stories of our American pastime and an essential for any baseball faithful. –Kerry Yo Nakagawa, historian, author, filmmaker, founder/director of the Nisei Baseball Research Project

Hopefully (this book) helps transform a long-neglected chapter of baseball history – Nisei baseball history – into a well-chronicled saga for all fans of all races, creeds and colors to appreciate. –Don Wakamatsu, First Asian-American Manager in MLB History

Bill Staples, Jr., is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), a board member of the Nisei Baseball Research Project, and a past speaker at the Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture at the National Baseball Hall of Fame. He lives in Chandler, Arizona. Learn more online at www.zenimura.com.

[1] Baseball Tourists start trip today, New York Times, October 14, 1922, pg. 16

[2] Majors’ club picked to tour Japan, The Ogden Standard-Examiner, June 22, 1922, pg. 8

[3] Gila Parade of Baseball Stars, Gila News-Courier, October 7, 1943, pg. 6

[4] SABR Asian Baseball Committee Japanese Baseball Page, http://asianbb.sabr.org

[5] BIG LEAGUERS BOOT ONE IN JAPAN, Herbert Hunter takes MLB all-stars to Japan, The Fresno Bee, December 14, 1922, pg. 9

[6] Timeline, Densho.org

[7] David King, “Finally Getting His Due,” San Antonio Express-News, July 30, 2006, Pg. 01C

[8] Sayama Kazuo, “Black Baseball Heroes: The Rise and Fall of The ‘Negro League’,” (Shinsho, 1994) 11-12

[9] Black Giants were treated like royalty, By Stephen Ellsesser, MLB.com, February 23, 2007

Baseball Cards Glamour Shot...

2011-04-24T17:48:00.000-07:00

A nice glamour shot of the cards found in the premier issue of "21"

"21" has also been reviewed at 4 great websites:

Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf: The flagship of baseball book review sites:
Read it HERE

Scott Crawford On Cards: A collector's irreverent musings on cards:
Read it HERE

Sports Card Info: The go-to site that reviews all the latest goodies the hobby has to offer:
Read it HERE

And last, but surely not least, Paul Lucas mentioned "21" on his monstrous UniWatch blog:
Read it HERE

Thanks you to everyone who's helping to spread the word of 21: The Illustrated Journal of Outsider Baseball!

73. Mose Solomon: The Rabbi Of Swat

2011-04-14T15:35:00.000-07:00

When I first started this blog a little over a year ago, I started receiving many requests for players to be profiled on here and given The Infinite Baseball Card Set "treatment." Out of all the emails I began to notice that it was not one particular player that was asked for the most, but rather a whole ethnic group: Jewish ballplayers. I did cards and stories on here of Sandy Koufax and Moe Berg, but I began slowly researching different players of the Jewish faith, trying to find characters who would fit in with the kind of stories I like to write. Guys with interesting stories who may not be known to the casual fan of baseball history. Mose Solomon was one of those guys, and in fact he appears on page 7 of the Premier Issue of "21: The Illustrated Journal of Outsider Baseball."

By the early 1920’s the owners of all three of New York’s ballclubs recognized the prospective value in finding a viable Jewish star to play for their team. Jews made up a large part of New York’s population and they embraced the National Pastime with a passion. Their loyalty was spread evenly among the three teams and each owner salivated at the thought of discovering a Babe Ruth of the Jewish persuasion which would undoubtedly attract the bulk of the city’s Jewish fans. So imagine the excitement caused when news spread of a Jew from the Lower East Side playing in the minors in Kansas hitting an unheard of 49 home runs in the summer of 1923. Manager John McGraw of the New York Giants, watching his attendance get siphoned away by the Yankees and Babe Ruth, nearly tripped over himself trying to purchase the contract of this gold mine in the making. Before he even made it to the Polo Grounds he was dubbed “The Rabbi Of Swat” by the press. As the train carrying Mose Solomon from Kansas neared New York City, the expectation of a million fans had reached a crescendo.

Born on Hester Street on the Lower East Side, Mose Solomon’s immigrant parents moved the family west to Ohio when he was a kid. Mose and his brothers grew up big and athletic, one brother becoming the boxing champ of Ohio and Mose taking up both football and baseball. He played on the Carlisle Indian School football team that featured Jim Thorpe until he was unmasked as being a Caucasian by a sportswriter. Mose started his professional baseball career in 1921 with the Vancouver Beavers and in the rough and tumble world of the low minors he made a name for himself as a man who would not put up with any anti-Semitism. Unlike many other Jews at the time including his brother Henry, the champion boxer who called himself “Henry Sully”, Mose refused to change his name to a less-ethnic one. It became evident in any place he played that he had no reservations about using his fists to fight back. Mose Solomon was one tough Jew.

It was while playing for the Hutchinson Wheat Shockers in the Southwestern League in 1923 that Mose became a legend. Out of nowhere he pounded 49 home runs, breaking the old record set way back in 1895. By September he was batting .421 and leading the league in doubles, hits and runs scored. News of his feat made newspapers all over the country and that is how John McGraw became aware of what he thought would become the Giants key to financial success. However prodigious his offensive skills were, his defensive abilities left much to be desired. In just 108 games he committed 31 errors covering first base. Even Hutchinson’s management, who would benefit greatly from selling Solomon’s contract warned the Giants about his liability in the field. None-the-less, Giant’s scout Dick Kinsella purchased his contract from the Wheat Shockers and put Mose on the next train east.

The much-heralded “Jewish Babe Ruth” rode the Giants’ bench while McGraw decided what to do. Finally on the last home game of the season, with the crowd yelling for Mose Solomon to take the field, McGraw put him in as a replacement for outfielder Ross Youngs. In the 10th inning with the score tied 3-3 and a runner on second, Solomon slammed a double to drive home the winning run. He played one more game for the Giants that year and all told went 3 for 8, a batting average of .375. Although he was ineligible to play and would not be paid, McGraw wanted Solomon to stay with the team while they played the Yankees in the World Series. Mose knew his family needed money however and declined to stay in New York, choosing to play pro football instead. An insulted John McGraw sold Solomon to Toledo, letting him find out about his demotion by reading it in the newspaper.

Mose drifted around the low minors until 1929, ending his career with a .313 average but his offensive production never again approached his 1923 numbers. Always a liability in the field, Mose Solomon was a designated hitter born way too soon. After baseball he moved to Florida and began a long and successful career as a building contractor.

The Premier Issue of "21: The Illustrated Journal of Outsider Baseball" is finally released and can be purchased by clicking on the tab right below the arrow on the main header of this blog.

72. Tommy Lasorda: Now pitching for the Angels?

2011-04-09T13:55:00.000-07:00

Here's an illustration I've been wanting to do for a while now. As a kid growing up, Tommy Lasorda was always the Dodgers manager. Just like winter would bring snow to my New Jersey town, come spring, Tommy Lasorda would be there in the Dodger dugout. When I started to collect baseball cards I was always more fascinated with the older cards and would spend my time gawking at the expensive ones safely secured in the card dealer's glass case. It was while drooling over some of these ancient pieces of cardboard that I saw a familiar name staring back at me: Tom Lasorda. The face was young and cherubic but it was unmistakably the current Dodger manager. The card was dated 1954 and I thought it was really neat that here the guy who was leading the Dodgers to all these pennants was once a player for that same team. That encouraged me to look further into the career of Tommy Lasorda but was let down when I found just a brief 3 year, 18 game career in the record book. But Lasorda's career prior to managing the Dodgers merits a closer look and the Infinite Baseball Card Set is here to do just that...

Before he became known as the perennial manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Tommy Lasorda was a crafty left-hander whose dream was to one day pitch for his favorite team. Growing up in Norristown, Pennsylvania, Lasorda was a die-hard fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Signed by the Phillies out of high school, he squeezed one minor league season in before being drafted into the army in 1945. After his discharge, Lasorda came roaring back in 1948 and while pitching for the Schenectady Blue Jays, struck out a record 25 batters in a 15 inning game against the Amsterdam Rugmakers. He won his own game by hitting an RBI single. Lasorda then continued on his tear by striking out 15 in his next start and then 13 after that. His performance against the Dodgers affiliate in the league, Trois-Rivieres, gained the attention of their manager Ed Head. When Philadelphia left him unprotected during the off-season the Brooklyn Dodgers snatched him up on Head's insistence. Assigned to the Class A Greenville Spinners, Tommy Lasorda was now on his way up the ladder leading to Ebbets Field.

After a 7-7 record in Greenville, he impressed the Dodgers enough to be sent directly to their top farm team in Montreal. In his first year Lasorda was 9-4 and the next year led his team to the Governor's Cup championship with a 12-8 record. These Montreal Royals teams of the early 1950's were just jam-packed with future Dodgers-in-waiting. Managed by Walt Alston who would go on to manage the Dodgers for 23 years, the 1951 pitching staff boasted Joe Black (the next season's National League's Rookie of the Year), Jim Hughes, Bud Podbielan and Chris Van Cuyk who all had serviceable careers in the majors.

Lasorda was immensely popular with the fans in Montreal. His teammates called him "Walkie-Talkie" for his ability to talk non-stop and expert bench-jockeying. He was also tough as nails and International League hitters learned to never dig in against the loud-mouth left-hander. He backed up his head-hunting fastball with his fists as well and he left a trail of on-field fights in his wake. Lasorda was driven by the desire to win and finally after another good season as the ace of the Royals staff, he got his chance at the big leagues, but not with Brooklyn.

The lowly St. Louis Browns purchased Lasorda after the 1952 season although pictures were even taken of the eager lefty in a Brownies uniform, the deal fell through and he was sent back to Monteal. Although obviously disappointed, Lasorda turned in yet another good season going 17-8 and leading the team to the Governor's Cup Championship and then on to victory in the Junior World Series against the Yankees top farm club, the Kansas City Blues. By now Lasorda had a respectable 52 wins and 25 losses for Monteal. He was perched on the top rung of the Brooklyn farm system and it was just a matter of time before the big club gave him a chance.

He bore down and was 14-4 in 1954. Former Montreal manager Walt Alston was now skipper of the Dodgers and in August called Lasorda up to the big club. With Brooklyn in a do-or-die race for the 1954 pennant, Lasorda was eager to show what he could do on a big league level. He got into his first game on August 5 against the Cardinals. He pitcher 3 innings in relief and gave up 6 hits including a home run and had 3 earned runs attributed to him. He rode the bench for a full month watching the pennant slip away from his beloved Dodgers. Dying for a chance to help his team he complained to Alston who told the lefty that he had brought him up for his attitude, not his talent. His former skipper felt that Lasorda's mouth was more of an asset to the team than his arm and had thought that the enthusiasm he brought to the clubhouse would help inspire Brooklyn to the pennant. This was devastating to Lasorda and for the first time he harbored doubts about his ability to play on a major league level. By September the Dodgers were out of the running and Lasorda pitched in 2 more games, throwing a total of 4 scoreless innings and giving up 1 hit.

Lasorda made the big club in 1955 but was cut after only 4 games including one on May 5th where he tied the Major League record for three wild pitches in one inning. Sent back to Montreal to make room for bonus-baby Sandy Koufax, Lasorda started off terrible, obviously letting his disappointment get in the way of his pitching. Now 27 years-old he was coming to the realization that his career was on the down-swing. However he discovered that he had other talents besides pitching - he worked well developing the younger players and he had a natural leadership quality that drew others to him. Bolstered by his new-found talents he started to pitch well and by the end of the season had led Montreal to yet another International League pennant. Although the Dodgers seemingly had given up on Lasorda, the Kansas City Athletics took notice and bought Lasorda's contract. He was a big leaguer again, but not for long. He pitched in 18 games for the A's and lost 4 games before he was traded to the Yankees who sent him to their Denver affiliate. After the season ended he petitioned the Yankees to sell him back to the Dodgers which they did.

So in 1957 Tommy Lasorda made it to Los Angeles 1 year before Brooklyn did. As a pre-cursor to their planned move to LA, the Dodgers had to purchase the existing minor league team, the Los Angeles Angels. A long-time top Chicago Cubs farm team, the Angels were coming off their championship 1956 season that many call the greatest minor league team of all time. With their purchase by Brooklyn, the Cubs transferred all their players elsewhere and Lasorda was tagged to help bolster the pitching staff.

The Pacific Coast League for decades were thought to be almost on a par with the major leagues with many players actually refusing to go to the big leagues because of better playing conditions and salaries found out west. Rivalries were hot and heavy among certain PCL clubs and in 1957 Lasorda inserted himself right in the middle of the biggest one, going down in league history not for his pitching but for his temper.

The Angels had a long-term history of fights with their cross-town rivals the Hollywood Stars. Already in the decade there had been a number of on-field altercations including a horrific televised riot in 1953. In what became known as "The Fight of '57," Lasorda was on the mound for the Angels and had given up a home run to Hollywood's pitcher Fred Waters. Now by the rules of baseball, the next batter had to go down. Not only was he pissed at giving up a homer, to give one up to a fellow pitcher was just embarrassing. Lasorda, who never shied away from giving a batter a little chin music, fired a ball directly at Spook Jacobs who hit the dirt. Picking himself up Jacobs said nothing and stepped back in the box. Remember, this was the unwritten law of baseball.

On the next pitch, Spook (look him up and you'll see where the name came from) bunted the ball back towards the pitcher. The second unwritten rule of baseball says that after throwing at a batter, that pitcher better expect a little retaliation in return. Lasorda of course knew this. Jacobs, figuring Lasorda would field the bunt and have to stand on first base thus enabling him to get the chance to spike the pitcher. But Lasorda didn't field the ball. Instead he charged at Jacobs and hit him from behind. All hell broke lose and the fight lasted 35 minutes.

All-in-all it was a terrible season for Lasorda and the Angels. In their last season in the Pacific Coast League the team finished in 6th place, a far cry from their historic 1956 squad. Lasorda was 7-10 and the next season was sent back to Montreal where he began honing his skills as a team leader by assisting Royals manager Clay Bryant run the team. He also had one of the best seasons of his career winning 18 games, but Lasorda knew his future was in managing and from then on everything he did was focused on attaining that goal. By 1965 he was at the helm of the Dodgers rookie league club and in 1976 replaced his former manager in Montreal, Walt Alston as skipper of his beloved Dodgers.

This drawing and story will most likely make it into a future issue of 21: The Illustrated Journal of Outsider Baseball. Scott Simkus and I are planning on a Southern California Issue and a story about the Dodgers most famous manager playing for the Angels is just too good a slice of irony to pass up!

THE PREMIER ISSUE OF 21: THE ILLUSTRATED JOURNAL OF OUTSIDER BASEBALL

2011-04-01T14:19:00.000-07:00

HERE IT IS! Hot off the presses - the test copies of the Premier Edition of 21: The Illustrated Journal of Outsider Baseball. Each new issue will be a 20 page themed journal featuring 14 or more original illustrations and stories like you've gotten used to seeing here on the Infinite Baseball Card Set blog. The premier issue's theme is "Jewish Baseball Pioneers & Stars" and features 14 original drawings and stories exploring the contribution Jewish players have made to the history of the game. Sure there's Moe Berg, Hank Greenberg and Sandy Koufax in this issue, but I also tried to bring you players you might not be that familiar with, after all, isn't that what you've come to expect from the Infinite Baseball Card Set blog?

The players featured and illustrated are as follows:

Lipman Pike - 1866 Philadelphia Athletics

Jake Atz - 1902 New Orleans Pelicans

Abel Kiviat - 1912 Olymics

Guy Zinn - 1914 Baltimore Terrapins

Al Schacht - 1919 Jersey City Skeeters

Mose Solomon - 1923 Hutchinson Wheat Shockers

Jimmie Reese - 1927 Oakland Oaks

Hank Greenberg - 1929 Brooklyn Bay Parkways

Coon Rosen - 1934 Friedman Boosters

Moe Berg - 1934 Major League All-Stars

Moe Franklin - 1946 Tampico Alijadores

Sam Nahem - 1946 Brooklyn Bushwicks

Mickey Rutner - 1950 Toronto Maple Leafs

Sandy Koufax - 1953 Coney Island Parkviews

The journal is printed on glossy card stock and the illustrations are printed front and back, in eye-catching full color. This little book actually exceeds all my expectations and I'm very proud to unveil it today. Although this issue was written and illustrated solely by me, the future editions will be in conjunction with Scott Simkus, a fellow writer and researcher who shares my interest in the forgotten nooks and crannies of baseball history. Together we are finishing up the second issue of 21 which will be an in-depth look at the 1933 Pittsburgh Crawfords and will feature never-before seen statistics and 17 original illustrations.

21: The Illustrated Journal of Outsider Baseball is $25 (shipping and handling included) and can be purchased by following the PayPal link below... (Books will be shipped starting on Saturday April 9th)

UPDATE -

2011-03-30T14:53:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry the posts have been a bit slow lately, the reason being that I have been working overtime trying to put the finishing touches on the 1st issue of "21-The Illustrated Journal of Outsider Baseball" As of today it's finished and the printer is making a few test copies so I can review the color and quality before I run the full job. I will be posting photos of the book once it comes back from the printer and if it meets my standards I'll let everyone know when it'll be available...

Also in the works is issue number 2: an in-depth look at the 1933 Pittsburgh Crawfords. From this issue on I'm joining forces with re-known baseball researcher Scott Simkus. Featuring groundbreaking statistics and 17 original illustrations, this will be the most complete study of one of the greatest baseball teams of all time...

71. Billy O'Hara: Knowing how to apply skills

2011-03-20T17:39:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you just stumble on interesting things when you least expect it. Besides baseball history, I'm also interested in military history, particularly World War I and earlier and it was while researching something on the Canadian Expeditionary Force that I stumbled on a newspaper article mentioning a former New York Giant outfielder earning a medal for hurling grenades like baseballs at the Germans. Now that was something worth looking into!

Toronto native Billy O'Hara started out in professional baseball with the Syracuse Stars in 1902, batting a nice .342 before moving on to Montreal later that year. He spent the next couple of years bouncing around the United States, moving up the food chain of minor leagues and by 1905 O'Hara was the star leftfielder of the Baltimore Orioles. He hit in the .300 range but he was more known for his defensive abilities and his rifle arm. Runners soon learned not to test the Canadian's arm - he was as accurate as a hunting rifle. John McGraw bought him from the Orioles and he was the Giants starting leftfielder during the 1909 campaign. Besides cracking the team's starting lineup he also earned cardboard immortality by being included in the famous T-206 set of baseball cards. O'Hara's average of .236 was the lowest of all the Giants starters that year, but he made only 5 errors in 226 chances. Unfortunately for O'Hara, McGraw had slugger Fred Snodgrass in the wings and traded O'Hara to the Cardinals. In 1910 he played only 9 games and was released to Toronto of the International League, right back where he started. O'Hara rebounded from his disappointing big league experience and gave his hometown Maple Leafs 4 great seasons that saw him become not only the team's star leftfielder, but also one of the most popular players with the Toronto fans. He was described as "an Irishman of the true-blue type, a scrapper and also a born gentleman." A natural comedian, he mixed easily with the Broadway crowd and counted George M. Cohan as one of his many friends. In the summer of 1915 his average tapered off, finishing with a disappointing .170, but he had other things on his mind besides throwing runner out at the plate.

Canada had joined with Great Britain and declared war on Imperial Germany. Like many men of that age, O'Hara felt the pull to become a part of the greatest adventure of his time. Right beyond his position in leftfield was the Curtiss Aviation School where their instructors worked round the clock to train new military aviators. An envious O'Hara watched them fly overhead and finally took private flying lessons. When the season ended the team threw him a gala dinner party for the leftfielder had joined the Royal Flying Corp. By Christmas, 1915 he was commissioned a Flight Lieutenant and was on his way to war.

Stationed on the English Channel, O'Hara flew defensive patrols until he crashed his plane in a non-combat accident. As punishment for destroying The King's Property he was transferred to the balloon corp, but O'Hara had signed up for action. He requested the infantry and was promptly sent to the trenches. Serving with the 24th Canadian Battalion he got his first taste of battle at the Battle of Ypres, somehow emerging unscathed. During the summer of 1916 the exhausted French Army pressed the British to launch an offensive to take the pressure off their own armies at Verdun. The resulting offensive, known as The Battle of the Somme, turned into the worst blood bath the British had ever suffered. On July 1st, following a massive bombardment, the Allied troops left their trenches and charged the German lines - in 10 minutes the British lost 60,000 men. O'Hara's battalion went over the top not once, but twice to try to dislodge the Germans. Turned back the first time, the Canadians were successful the second time but in the process of gaining the first line enemy trench lost 950 out of 1,200 men. While clearing the trench O'Hara came face to face with a German officer and took the top of his head off with a well-placed shot from his .45 automatic.

After weeks of futile attacks failed and both sides had reverted to trench warfare again, O'Hara and his men were sent into the front lines. It was here on The Somme in October of 1916 that Billy O'Hara put his baseball skills to another use. Canadian troops were renown for their particular zeal in night-time trench raids. These typically entailed small squads of about 10-20 men led by a lieutenant crawling through the barbed wire of no-mans-land and slithering undetected into the German lines unleashing a barrage of grenades and mayhem, hopefully culminating in the capture of a few of the enemy and returning back to their own lines unharmed.

Billy O'Hara, the leftfielder remembered for his accurate and powerful throwing arm, had found another use for the skills once used while manning his position in the Polo Grounds. The standard British No. 5 Mills Bomb was the standard issue grenade used during O'Hara's time in the trenches. The No. 5 weighed about 3 times more than an Official National League baseball but it's size and shape, unlike the cumbersome German stick grenade, enabled Canadian troops, like O'Hara who had grown up playing baseball, to throw it accurately as opposed to lobbing it like European troops who were not accustomed to throwing anything overhand. This simple skill that North American boys take for granted earned Billy O'Hara one of the most coveted decorations the British government could bestow on one of her soldiers.

While leading a bombing party on a trench raid, Lieutenant William A. O'Hara, 24th Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Forces, was recommended for the Military Cross "...in recognition of his bravery and skill in hurling bombs..."

The Military Cross was awarded only to officers and is roughly equivalent to the Silver Star in the U.S. Army.

After the Somme, O'Hara and the rest of the Canadians scored a spectacular victory at the Battle of Vimy Ridge. Vimy Ridge is to Canadians what Iwo Jima or Guadalcanal is to Americans. During the battle a shell landed next to Lieutenant O'Hara and buried him under a mound of French soil. He woke up later in a hospital behind the lines. It appears that physically O'Hara was unhurt but he was put out of action by the effects of rheumatism, brought on by too many nights in the wet trenches. Reading between the lines it can also be assumed that besides rheumatism he was suffering from severe shell shock - getting exploded and buried would do that to even the hardiest warriors. He was eventually sent back to Canada to recuperate in the Spring of 1918 and he lectured extensively about the horrors as well as the lighter side of life in the trenches.

After the war, instead of returning to baseball, Billy O'Hara decided to pursue the life of a trapper in the Echo Lake region of Northern Ontario, near the town of Kapuskasing - in other words, smack-dab in the middle of nowhere. His reasons for doing so are unknown - one would suspect it was his way of seeking solitude and dealing with the wholesale slaughter he had witnessed in the trenches during the preceding 3 years. While guys like Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Dos Passos retreated to the bright lights of Paris, others like O'Hara retreated to the peace of nature. Unfortunately his attempt to make a living as a conventional trapper came to nothing when his trap lines failed to produce much prey, but as always, Billy O'Hara was resourceful.

With a nod to the knowledge learned elsewhere, O'Hara decided to apply the deadly skills he had learned in the war to help him earn a living in the wild. In 1920 he petitioned the Canadian government to use surplus observation balloons to track the animals that eluded his traps and once found, use a machine gun mow down the unsuspecting herds of moose and deer, the same way his comrades had been mowed down on the Somme in 1916. His revolutionary ideas had made the papers at the time and although there was no follow up, I think it is safe to say that his proposal was denied.

Whatever the outcome, Billy O'Hara eventually emerged from the frozen North and in 1927 took the reigns of this hometown Maple Leafs. He managed the team through 1928 when he switched over to become their business manager. He was traveling with the team on one of their road trips in June of 1931 when he suffered a fainting spell in Newark, N.J. After being examined by doctors he was told he had a serious heart ailment and would not last the year. O'Hara continued to function as the team's business manager and it was while performing his duties that he started to feel ill while accompanying the team in Buffalo. He stayed with his team but by the time they arrived in Jersey City for a series against the Skeeters, he was unable to leave his bed at the Plaza Hotel. Billy O'Hara was surrounded by friends when he suffered a convulsion and died before doctors could arrive.

So now when someone tries telling you that baseball is just a sport and has no application to the real world, tell 'em about Billy O'Hara, the grenade-throwing leftfielder...

70. Babe Ruth: From George to Babe, Spring, 1914

2011-03-05T14:59:00.000-08:00

I think I've mentioned it a few times before that back in 2002 I took the year off and traveled with an exhibit from the Babe Ruth Museum out of Baltimore. Sportswriter & author Charlie Vascellaro invited me to come along as his assistant as he set up this exhibit detailing the life of The Babe at major league spring training facilities in Arizona and then during the regular season at minor league ballparks. The journey, graciously underwritten by Baby Ruth Candy Bars, took us all over the country and we spread the gospel of The Babe to anyone lucky enough to see our set up and talk to us. Many people just knew The Babe as a fat caricature and had no idea what a great pitcher he had been early in his career - at the time, best left-hander in the game to be exact. Charlie and I had a grand time explaining the origins behind the myths that surround the great man and I for one never tired of regaling the fans with wild-but-true stories from his colorful life. I believe Charlie and I really created quite a few new fans of The Babe that year as we barnstormed around the country and I was disappointed to find out that the exhibit was drastically scaled back the next season, staffed by a couple of college kids who really didn't have any knowledge of or passion for The Babe. The next year it was abandoned all together. The Babe Ruth Museum, at that time housed in the actual home he was born in, blocks away from Camden Yards, was moved to Camden Yards and unfortunately morphed into some kind of generic "Baltimore Sports" thing with The Babe undeservedly taking a back seat to a host of random local athletes. But anyway, one of the best and most asked questions we received while manning the exhibit was "how did Babe Ruth get that nickname?"

Growing up neglected and wild on the rough Baltimore waterfront, George Herman Ruth's parents packed him off to the Catholic-run orphanage called St. Mary's Industrial School For Boys. Ruth bounced back and forth between home and this school until his mother passed away and his father sent him there for good. Although often referred to simply as a "reform school," St. Mary's was also a vocational school that taught its young wards various industrial trades like cobbler, carpenter and printing so they could have productive lives when released. Ruth worked in the school's shirt factory and in fact was so proud of his skills learned at St. Mary's that until his death the nattily-dressed slugger took pride in sewing and mending his own garments.

Finally surrounded by caring adults, Ruth thrived at the school and it was under the tutelage of Xaverian Brother Matthias that the boy learned the game of baseball. Brother Matthias gave young George the attention and understanding that others had failed to provide. Brother Matthias was able to harness the wild boy and through the combination of a stiff hand and kindness George blossomed. Matthias taught Ruth to hit, pitch, play the infield and catch. Big and strong, it wasn't long before Jack Dunn, owner of the local minor league Baltimore Orioles got wind of the locked-up young star. Ruth's exploits on the diamond was written up a few times in the Baltimore papers and after seeing him for himself, Dunn sat down with the Xaverian Brothers at the school and signed the 19-year-old to a minor league contract. There was one catch - in order to release George from St. Mary's, Jack Dunn had to accept legal guardianship of Ruth. This legal transaction formed one part of the famous nickname.

Traveling south to Fayetteville, North Carolina for Baltimore's spring training, Ruth left the city of his birth for the first time. His new teammates were at the same time amused and amazed at the naive gentle giant trying to make their team. He believed anything the older players told him and the 19-year-old was ripe pickings for pranks. Used to years of regimentation, Ruth couldn't believe that he could eat as much as he'd like and the team would pick up the tab! Gorging himself on anything the waiter would bring, his teammates looked on in an awed hush as he devoured helping after helping. He used his pocket money to bribe the hotel elevator operator to let him run the foreign contraption, once even coming close to losing his head when he neglected to close the safety cage.

Jack Dunn had entrusted his veteran catcher Ben Egan to look after his prized find. Egan joined the rest of the veterans in playing jokes on the big rube, but shut them down when he felt it was going too far - this was Jack Dunn's new found prize after all. Because of all the care that was lavished on the big, strapping kid, the other players took to calling him "Dunnies Baby" or "Dunn's Babe." This was a fairly common temporary and slightly derogatory way to describe a wet-behind-the-ears rookie at that time. If a player was any good, he soon lost the moniker and if he didn't, soon disappeared anyway.

George made friends with the local children and from one received the use of his bicycle. The excitable rookie quickly taught himself to ride the unfamiliar machine and would race around the small town going faster and faster. When he'd finally mastered (or so he thought) the skill of riding a bike, he decided to race by the team's hotel and impress the other players relaxing on its grand porch. Gaining speed as fast as he could, Ruth raced by the hotel and after just barely avoiding an oncoming truck, crashed to the ground in a heap after hitting the curb. The players rushed over and coach Scout Steinman spoke for the whole team when he said "If manager Dunn does not shackle that new babe of his, he'll not be a Rube Waddell in the rough, he'll be a Babe Ruth in the cemetery." Baltimore News-Post sportswriter Rodger Pippen happened to be amongst worried witnesses to the crash and wrote the story up in the next day's dispatches and just like that, the once derogatory adjective was now the colorful nickname tacked onto the Orioles' most promising rookie.

By the time the team started inter-squad games, George Herman Ruth was forever after known as BABE RUTH.

Right from the start it was evident that "Dunnies Babe" was the real thing. On the mound he dominated, the young left-hander had a nice curve and a fastball that swung to the left of the plate, confounding right-handed batters. He had a smooth, easy motion and didn't get rattled when there was runners on base. But it was his skill with a bat that attracted the most attention early that spring. In his first inter-squad game, Ruth smashed a ball to rightfield that traveled so far news of it made the newspapers both locally and back in Baltimore. The great athlete Jim Thorpe once hit a legendary home run in Fayetteville that the locals talked about but this homer by Ruth topped even that. In batting practice the other players began complaining that they couldn't keep up with chasing all the baseballs Ruth hit over their heads and into cornfield beyond the outfield. One even inquired as to whether the Orioles were going to provide cab fare for outfielders retrieving balls belted by the new kid.

Dominating inter-squad games was one thing, the real test came when it came time to perform against major league teams who were training in the same area as the Orioles. The Philadelphia Phillies came to town first. Philadelphia had finished 2nd in the National League the year before and after a few innings had scored 6 runs of of starter Smoke Klinglehoffer. With 1 out and 1 man on first in the 6th inning, Babe Ruth took the mound in relief. He balked on his first pitch, advancing the runner to 2nd. Ruth embarrassingly told catcher Ben Egan that he had forgotten there was a man on base. Ruth bore down and struck out the next two batters to end the inning and held the Phillies to 2 hits and no runs as the Orioles won 7-6. A few days later he went the distance against the best team in baseball, Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics. Giving up 13 well-spaced hits, the rookie struck out 3 A's and only slugger Home Run Baker was able to say he hit the kid well, going 4 for 5 off the lefty.

The Orioles played their way north and after arriving in Charm City played a game against the Brooklyn Dodgers. The newly christened "Babe Ruth" held the Dodgers hitless for a few innings and held on to defeat Brooklyn 10-6. If an unknown rookie pitching a game like that against a major league team wasn't enough, The Babe simply astonished everyone with his hitting. His first time up he smashed a ball to rightfielder Casey Stengel who had to hustle to make the catch for an out. To be fooled by an unknown rookie like that was simply embarrassing. In the dugout Brooklyn manager Wilbert Robinson chewed Stengel out for almost missing the ball and not playing the kid deeper. The next time up Ruth crushed another ball sending Stengel, who had made an adjustment and played the rookie further back, running in vain as the ball dropped out of reach for a triple.

In the words of Casey Stengel: "We lost the game. The kid beats us pitching and he beats us batting. That's when I first saw Ruth. I would say I was impressed."