190. Marius Russo: Battle-tested on the Fields of Bushwick

This is the fifth and last of 5 Bushwicks Stories in 5 days. For the introduction to the Bushwicks and this series please go HERE first. 

So far we've seen three of the four types of players that made up the Brooklyn Bushwicks:

1) The guy who had all the talent in the world, but never wanted to turn pro.

2) Aging big leaguer on his way back down into the civilian world. 

3) The career minor leaguer who just didn't have that certain "something" to make the majors.

Today we have Marius Russo, a guy who perfectly personifies the fourth and last type of Bushwick:

4) The young guy from the area who wanted to make a name for himself.

With pin-point control and a nice side-arm fastball, Marius Russo cut through collegiate competition like a knife. The Long Island University student's 8-2 record and headline-grabbing win at the Greater New York College All-Star Game grabbed the attention of the Yankees super-scout Paul Krichell. When Russo's college athletic eligibility was used up in the spring of 1936, the lefty found his services were in much demand in New York City's semi-pro circuit. The college kid hired his arm out to various teams including the Glendale Farmers and Brooklyn Bay Parkways. Krichell sat in the stands and watched closely but before he got the kid's signature on a Yankee contract he wanted to see more. He wanted to see how the lefty did against the best players outside the major leagues. Krichell wanted to see how Russo did against Negro League teams.

After ascertaining the kid wanted was game to pursuing a career in pro ball, Krichell made a phone call to Max Rosner and within days Russo was in a Brooklyn Bushwick's uniform. 

Krichell knew, and Russo soon discovered, that whiffing a bunch of college kids was a lot different than facing the Negro League teams. A great many of the blackball players he would face in the summer of 1936 were of obvious major league caliber but for their skin color. 

His first brush with blackball came against the New York Black Yankees. Formed from the ashes of the old Lincoln Giants, the Black Yankees were the perennial losers of the Negro National League but still had some solid ballplayers like Tubby Scales and Fats Jenkins - not Hall of Famers but had they been the right hue they'd be on a big league roster somewhere. The Black Yanks slapped Russo around for 7 runs on 15 hits. Next he faced the Philadelphia Stars, Negro National League champs two years earlier. The Stars had future Hall of Famers Jud Wilson and Turkey Stearnes in their line up and knocked the kid out of the box by the 5th inning. Russo went on to lose his next four starts against the black teams. None of his losses came close to being as dramatic as the game he pitched against the Pittsburgh Crawfords in June. 

The Crawfords were the New York Yankees of blackball. Ruthlessly assembled by racketeer Gus Greenlee, the Craws had by 1936 assembled the greatest team in Negro League history. No less than five Hall of Famers - Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Oscar Charleston, Cool Papa Bell and Judy Johnson - came to face Russo and the Bushwicks that day. By now the college kid had faced blackball teams a few times and knew they played fast and hard. His teammates on the Bushwicks were much more experienced - the median age was about 31 - and their advice on how to pitch to those guys was starting to pay off. In that June game against the Craws Russo was holding onto a 4-3 lead going into the 9th inning. It had been a see-saw game but three more outs and Russo would have his first victory over a black team. 

Second baseman Dickie Seay was up first. He was playing on a swollen ankle and had gone hitless all afternoon. Now he led off the ninth with a cheap single that found a hole in the Bushwicks infield. Manager Oscar Charleston put in a pinch runner and the pitcher Leroy Matlock sacrificed him over to second. With one away Cool Papa Bell came up to the plate. Cool already tapped Russo for three hits that day but he popped a ball up to the infield that is caught for out number two. Russo is one out from beating the best team in blackball history. 

Speedy outfielder Jimmie Crutchfield is due up but the Craws manager Oscar Charleston takes the bat from his hands and pencils himself in as a pinch hitter. Charleston, who many say was the absolutely best black (heck, some say of any color) ballplayer of all time, was now into his fourth decade and beginning to pack on the chub. Regardless, when Russo hung his fastball over the inside of the plate Charleston sent it 410 feet over the right field wall for a two run homer and the 5-4 edge. Russo recovered enough to snag Sam Bankhead's liner back to the box for out number three. The Bushwicks still had one more inning to retaliate and the odds weren't bad until Satchel Paige emerged from the bullpen to pitch the ninth. Satch was in the prime of his career and his blazing fastball sent the three Bushwicks he faced back in order for the win.

While many young ballplayers would have been discouraged by continued failure, Russo did not. He'd lose seven times before he could claim a win over the black teams and he used this crash course in blackball to become a smarter pitcher. Over all his stats weren't horrible. Scott Simkus meticulously reassembled Russo's 1936 Bushwicks season and found the kid had a respectable 3.82 ERA in 12 games against Negro League clubs. By the end of the summer Russo was a seasoned veteran, a graduate of the Dexter Park Academy of hardball. On September 2nd he got the chance to face the Crawfords again, and this time it was he who was the victor. As opposed to the 12,000 who watch their first tryst, just 4,400 braved the threatening weather for the night game. In what may have been Marius Russo's greatest pitching performance of his entire career, the lefty shut out the Crawfords on two hits and struck out nine.

Krichell has seen enough. Before the summer was through Russo was part of the Yankees organization. 

The Yankees sent him to their top farm team which happened to be just across the Hudson River in Newark, New Jersey. The team Russo joined has gone down in history as possibly the best minor league team of all time. Of the 32 men who suited up for the Newark Bears  that year, no fewer than 27 would go on to play in the majors, either with the Yankees or other big league teams. The kid from Queens won 8 games for the pennant-bound Bears, and the Yankees ear-marked him to be the heir-apparent to the great Lefty Grove. To give him a touch more seasoning he spent 1938 in Newark where he posted a record of 17 wins and then was called up to the big club for 1939.

Now Marius Russo became an integral part of what historians believe was the greatest team in major league history, the 1939 Yankees. As part of this juggernaut the lefty won 8 games with a 2.41 ERA, not bad at all for a rookie. He followed that up with 14 wins in 1940 and then another 14 in 1941. By now he was the best pitcher on the Yankees and manager Joe McCarthy had him pitch Game 3 of the World Series against the Dodgers. With the series tied at a game apiece he faced off against veteran Fat Freddie Fitzsimmons. Both men pitched magnificently, neither giving up a run through six innings. Then in the bottom of the seventh, Russo hit a line drive that smashed into Fitzsimmons' kneecap. Brooklyn rushed reliever Hugh Casey into the game who promptly gave up 2 runs while Russo cruised to a 4-hit complete game victory to give the Yankees the edge in the series. The hometown kid was an instant hero and the Yanks went on to beat the Dodgers in seven games. 

His fame was short-lived. Sometime early in the '42 season he hurt his arm. He managed a 4-1 record but to relieve the pain in his arm he began noodling with his delivery and soon the velocity was gone from his fastball. 1943 was a disappointing 5-10, but with a still respectable 3.72 ERA. With a good part of his pitching staff evaporating into the service, McCarthy tapped Russo to pitch Game 4 of the 1943 World Series against St. Louis. The Cards had been fortunate in regards to the draft and still had all of their starters in uniform. Russo came through with one last glorious game. Holding Hall of Famers Stan Musial and Marty Marion and the rest of the Cards to seven hits, the sore armed lefty hit two doubles and scored the go ahead run in the eighth. The win put the Yanks up 3 games to 1 in their eventual win over St. Louis.

Russo joined the Army after the series and briefly came back to the Yanks in 1946 but the arm was through. He put away his spikes and worked in the aircraft industry on Long Island, eventually retiring to a life of travel with his wife. The old lefty was a popular character at old-timers games and became a font of first hand knowledge for historians interested in the great Yankees teams of the 1930's. He passed away at the age of 90 in 2005.

Baseball archaeologist Scott Simkus wrote a wonderful piece on Russo and his 1936 season with the Bushwicks in the much-missed Outsider Baseball Bulletin. Simkus meticulously reconstructed the lefty's record against the Negro Leaguers and uses these and other Bushwicks stats in a brilliant formula to accurately gauge the level of talent found in the black leagues. I can't stress how important his book "Outsider Baseball" is to modern researchers and can't recommend it enough. 

This concludes the "5 Bushwicks in 5 Days" series. It's been fun concentrating on one little-known aspect of baseball history in one break-neck marathon session. I'm not quite sure where next week's story will take us, but you can be assured it sure as heck will be interesting!

189. Walt VanGrofski: Good, But Just Not Good Enough

This is the fourth of 5 Bushwicks Stories in 5 days. For the introduction to the Bushwicks and this series please go HERE first. 

Some where, many years ago I came across a catcher named VanGrofski. For the life of me I can't remember where or how I first heard of him, but for the better part of a decade I've tried to piece together the career of this journeyman catcher. Maybe it was the odd Polish name with the Dutch prefix. Or perhaps it was because he came from Bloomfield, New Jersey, close to the city of Passaic where I was born. What ever it was, it certainly wasn't because he was well-known. VanGrofski never played in the majors and his last name is misspelled in records and newsprint more often than it is spelled correctly. Still, every time I came across a box score or article that mentioned him, I put it in my "VanGrofski file", just waiting for the right time to put it all together. Now, with this "5 Bushwicks in 5 Days" series I have that perfect opportunity - Walt VanGrofski is the perfect example of one of the four types of players on the Brooklyn Bushwicks...

Walt VanGrofski was good, just not good enough to make it all the way to the majors.

Walt VanGrofski came out of the same Polish neighborhood in Bloomfield, New Jersey that produced future Yankees Hank Borowy and Dan Savage. At Bloomfield High he knocked the cover off the ball and divided his time between the outfield and calling the shots from behind the plate. Even in the early 1930's Walt VanGrofski was described as a throwback - an old school backstop cast from the same mold as Ray Schalk. Just over 6' tall and 170 lbs, VanGrofski possessed a take no prisoners attitude with a gritty, excitable drive that became immediately obvious when you were on the wrong end of his dark, steely-eyed glare. His friends and local sports writers called him "Beeky", a nickname no one outside Bloomfield dared to use.

He turned pro in 1931 with the Clarksburg Generals of the the entry-level Mid Atlantic League. The next season he was picked up by the Dodgers organization and shipped to York of the New York-Penn League. VanGrofski batted around .250 through 1933 and was picked to join a tour of minor league prospects stopping at Puerto Rico and parts of South America. While in San Juan VanGrofski learned his contract was picked up by the Pirates who promoted him to the Little Rock Travelers, a team which today would be AA level ball. Now the catcher's career seemed to stall. He hit a lack-luster .214, then was demoted back to the New York-Penn League. When the Pirates decided to send him to Savannah the catcher called foul. Rather than play low-level ball in the sweltering Georgia summer, VanGrofski packed his grip and took the next train back to New Jersey. On his way out of town he told reporters he intended to stay in Bloomfield indefinitely and play semi-pro ball in the New York Metropolitan area.

A week later Pittsburgh punted him back to the Brooklyn organization who shuttled him to the Allentown Brooks. It was while playing for the Brooks in 1936 that VanGrofski made headlines for his hitting, just not the kind you did with a bat. Allentown was beating the snot out of future Phillies pitcher Hugh Mulcahy. (Mulcahy would earn the unfortunate nicknames of "Losing Pitcher Mulcahy" and "Hard Luck Mulcahy" after twice losing 20 games in a season for the Phils). VanGrofski had three hits off the future Phillie when he came up the forth time with runners in scoring position. Mulcahy lost his cool and fired a fastball at VanGrofski's head. Walt threw away his bat and charged the mound. The pitcher, who had a few inches and 20 lbs on VanGrofski, left the mound to meet him. Before Mulcahy could get a swing in, VanGrofski landed a devastating hook that opened up a large cut above the pitchers eye and another quick jab that settled the score. A fight broke out that eventually rose to riotous proportions, necessitating a platoon of police to quell the mess. VanGrofski was slapped with a $25 fine and Mulcahy charged $10 as punishment.

Whether it was frustration building up or just Walter being what the press described as "the aggressive type of player", VanGrofski rode the adrenaline and was hitting a career high .304 when an incident happened that might be the reason the catcher never made the bigs. During a close game against Elmira and the pennant on the line, second baseman Packy Rogers attempted to score on a long single. VanGrofski took the throw from the relay man and waited for Rogers who came in spike high. In the terrible collision Rogers' metal spikes tore the catcher's mitt completely off VanGrofski's hand but somehow he held onto the ball to tag the his assailant out. Newspapers at the time remarked on how nasty a play it was and there remained bad blood between the two teams for quite some time. There was no mention I could find about an injury, but one phrase began appearing after this incident to describe VanGrofski: "weak armed".

The Brooklyn organization took notice of the 25 year-old firebrand and sent him to the Winston-Salem Twins as their player-manager. He was still with Winston-Salem in '38 when he butted heads with the club's president. When the dust settled VanGrofski was fired and exiled from the Dodgers family. He went back to Jersey again and soon found a berth with the Trenton Senators, part of the Washington Senators organization. A newspaper article from the time finds a vengeful VanGrofski chomping at the bit to face the Dodgers farm team that played in the same league as Trenton. The accompanying photograph shows a man you'd not want to cross. This time the animosity didn't translate to success on the field and he finished the summer with a lousy .198 average. When he hit the same numbers in 1940 he found himself without a job in organized baseball.

Again, VanGrofski went home to New Jersey. Bloomfield is a short bus or train ride from Manhattan, the hotbed of semi-pro baseball. VanGrofski might have been out of organized baseball, but that didn't mean he was finished as a player. While many young ballplayers used the semi-pro's as a place to gain the attentions of big league scouts, experienced veterans like VanGrofski hoped that a good season on the sandlots would rejuvenate their flagging career. In the spring of 1940 Walt VanGrofski was 28 years-old and far from giving up his major league dreams.

The best semi-pro outfit in the country, the Brooklyn Bushwicks, had a bona-fide major league veteran behind the plate in Charlie Hargreaves. The 43 year-old spent 8 seasons with the Brooklyn Dodgers and Pittsburgh Pirates and now was making a comfortable living playing semi-pro ball at Dexter Park. However, since the Bushwicks played double headers on Saturday and Sundays, Hargreave's 43 year-old knees would necessitate an understudy and Walt VanGrofski was available.

The catcher's plan to stay in the minds of the baseball powers-that-be worked, but just like Allentown in 1936, it was for the wrong reason.

On Sunday July 21st, the Bushwicks were hosting the Homestead Grays of the Negro National League for a double header. As usual Hargreaves caught the first game and VanGrofski took the night cap. In the sixth inning Howard Easterling, the slugging third baseman of the Grays, hit a long fly down the right field line. The Bushwicks typically hired two umpires for a game as opposed to the majors who used three at the time. While this saved money it sometimes made for bad calls and this was one of those times. Umpire Meyers called the blast a home run which would have tied the score at 3-all. The other umpire by the name of Shannon ruled it foul and Meyers reversed his call. The 10,000 fans in the stands made their disapproval known and a deluge of seat cushions, scorecards and hats began. When those ran out they started with the soda pop and beer bottles.

Someone in the third base box seats fired a Coca Cola bottle at VanGrofski that just missed his head. If you've ever held one of those old glass Coke bottles in your hand then you can understand why the Bushwick's catcher became super-pissed. Already a high-strung and aggressive competitor, VanGrofski picked out who he believed threw the bottle, a black guy named Henry Strong, and charged into the stands to settle accounts. In seconds he was over the rail and all over Strong, but just as fast the crowd turned on VanGrofski and he had to be rescued by his teammates. Meanwhile more than one hundred angry fans swarmed onto the field. A squad of Brooklyn's Finest met them head on and brought order back to Dexter Park.

Being this was an inter-racial sporting event, the consequences could have been very dire. Fortunately this was Brooklyn, not Birmingham or Atlanta and no repercussions followed. The Bushwicks continued to play the top-level Negro League teams without incident and VanGrofski was soon back in organized ball.

The Yankees saw a promising leader in the fiery catcher and assigned him to their Wellsville team as a player/manager in 1942. The Wellsville fans embraced their scrappy manager and the team became known throughout the league as "VanGrofski's Ruffians". Then almost as soon as he returned to pro-ball he was drafted into the Army. He served a year as an athletics instructor before sent back home. The battle damage inflicted on his body during his more than ten years as a professional catcher was probably the reason for the early discharge. He was working as recreation attendant at Newark's Wilson Avenue school when the Yankees gave him a call. Their top farm team, the Newark Bears, were a team full of kids too young for the draft and aging veterans useless for combat. An experienced backstop with managerial experience like VanGrofski was just the thing the Bears needed. Now well into his thirties, VanGrofski finally made it to one step shy of the major leagues.

The catcher barely hit above .200 in 59 games in 1944, but the next year he swatted the wartime pitching at a .290 clip. The problem was that his arm was shot and runners knew it, swiping bases off him at their leisure. When the war ended, VanGrofski and most of the wartime Bears were released. The Yankees saw managerial promise in VanGrofski and sent him to their Sunbury, Pennsylvania club where they'd just built a $200,000 stadium. Described by local sports writers as "a high-strung fellow", VanGrofski led the league in being thrown out of games by umpires. He even nursed a private feud with the scribes in the press box. The fans loved it. He managed for a few more seasons, passing from the Yankees to the A's organization before calling it a career after more than twenty years. He returned to Bloomfield where he and his wife Mathilde raised an athletic son named Tom and put in 25 years as an electrician. The fiery receiver passed away at his home in Ocean City, New Jersey in 2000. 

As a foot note, I wish I'd have known VanGrofski was still alive and living near my Grandma until 2000. I'd began researching his career years before that and would have loved the chance to talk to him in person, to sit face to face with the guy who I'd read so much about. While guys like Joe DiMaggio or Honus Wagner had careers that took them to Cooperstown, to me they're a bore compared to a journeyman like Walt VanGrofski.

188. Dazzy Vance: Dazzy's Last Dance

This is the third of 5 Bushwicks Stories in 5 days. For the introduction to the Bushwicks and this series please go HERE first. 

One of the greatest attraction for Bushwicks fans was the revolving door of former big league stars who suited up at Dexter Park. George Earnshaw, Waite Hoyt, Jeff Tesareau and Dazzy Vance were among the aging marquee names that played a last season or two with the semi-pros. 

Dazzy Vance was by far the Bushwick fan's favorite. For more than a dozen years Vance had toiled for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Although he'd won the MVP Award in 1924, led the National League in strike outs seven consecutive times and wins twice, Vance never seemed to get the adulation he deserved, solely because he played for a lousy ball club. Still, the cowboy from Iowa kept a cheery attitude and went out there every time determined to win. By the time he was released by the Dodgers in August of 1935, Vance had won just three game shy of 200 games all for a team that very rarely finished over .500. It was this determination in the face of overwhelming odds endeared him to the blue collar Brooklyn fans. Vance was a well-traveled 44 years of age when the Dodgers handed him his walking papers. Over the hill as he might be, Vance still felt he had life left in his arm and someone, somewhere would want him on their side. He didn't have to look far. 

Max Rosner quickly put together a lucrative package to lure the pitcher to Woodhaven: $4,000 for 2 months work. This was a tidy sum back in 1935 and when adjusted for inflation would be about $69,000 today. For Rosner, the four grand was pretty much a guarantee that the Bushwicks would pull in sold out crowds for the rest of the season. 

While today it might seem sad to see a former star playing for a semi-pro team, Vance for one didn't think so. He was going from the worst team in the National League to a team that not only drew more fans than the Dodgers but also could probably beat his old team in a short best of seven series. Another factor was Vance would get to pitch at least for a little while longer before a crowd that totally idolized him. What aging ballplayer wouldn't want to hear that roar a few more times before slipping away into the history books?

There was one last reason Vance was eager to take the Bushwicks offer, something he couldn't get with any major or minor league team. The pitcher told reporters "I'm having my first fling, too, at pitching against Negro teams".

Dazzy Vance's debut for the Bushwicks was on August 30th. Before a huge crowd Vance threw 2 hitless innings against the semi-pro Springfield Greys, striking out three. Two days later he faced his first Negro League opponent, the Nashville Elite Giants of the Negro National League, the big leagues of blackball. Although the pitcher was sick earlier in the day, once he saw the 15,000 who packed into Dexter Park to see him, he suited up. The old hurler was terrific, scattering three hits through seven innings and striking out five.

And so it went. On September 8 the bearded House of David came to Dexter Park. Pitching for the House was an even older ex-big leaguer than Vance - Grover Cleveland Alexander. Alex was barely holding himself together at this point in his career, his 49 year-old body ravaged by alcohol abuse and years of neglect. Still, 20,000 fans watched as the two dinosaurs faced off one last time. Alex lasted barely two innings, but Vance put on quite a show, six shutout innings and striking out eleven of the beards that day. 

A week later he faced another Negro National League team, the Philadelphia Stars, going six innings and leaving the game down 4-3. Seven Stars were strike out victims. Five days later he lasted three innings against the Elmhurst Grays, a local white semi-pro team. On the 29th Vance pitched against the New York Cubans, striking out nine in six innings of work. If Vance truly wanted to test his mettle against the best Negro League clubs, the Elites, Stars and Cubans were among the best around, and for an aging 44 year-old, he did pretty good. 

The crowds that turned out to watch Vance's swan song certainly made Max Rosner's $4,000 investment worth while. It was now midway through October and the weather was getting cold and wet. Baseball season would soon be over, but there was still one big game left. On October 13th the rival Brooklyn Bay Parkways came to play, this time with the great Babe Ruth on their team. 

15,000 fans braved football weather to see the two oldsters face off. Vance was in top form, holding the 40 year-old Ruth hitless his first two at bats. When The Babe came to the plate the third time, the fans razzed the big man, all of which he took in stride. "Hell" he yelled to the crowd "I'm tryin' to get a hit!" Vance turned around and waved his outfielders in, the ultimate in baseball showmanship, a direct challenge to The Babe. Vance fired one straight down the middle for strike one. No one ever knew what the next pitch was because Ruth knocked it over the right field wall for a home run. Smiling broadly, The Babe circled the bases as the crowd went insane.

Dazzy Vance and The Babe faced off one last time a week later. Ruth went 1 for 3 and Vance, playing his last game, pitched five innings before calling it a career. The ancient pitcher retired to Florida, leading an active life and frequent guest at Brooklyn Dodgers reunions up until his death in 1961.

187. Dutch Woerner: The Definition of a "Semi-Pro"

This is the second of 5 Bushwicks Stories in 5 days. For the introduction to the Bushwicks and this series please go HERE first. 

Go ahead, search all the baseball reference books and online stat sites for as long as you want, but you'll never find Dutch Woerner in any of them. Yet for almost two decades William "Dutch" Woerner was a super star to baseball fans in the New York City area. He didn't play for the New York Yankees or John McGraw's Giants, not even the lowly Brooklyn Dodgers. Nor is he one of the countless Negro League players who never got a chance to play in the majors because of their skin tone. Dutch Weorner was a Brooklyn Bushwick.

There were basically four types of player on the Bushwicks:

1) Young guy from the area trying to make a name for himself.

2) Aging big leaguer on his way back down into the civilian world.

3) The career minor leaguer who just didn't have that certain "something" to make the majors.

4) The guy who had all the talent in the world, but never wanted to turn pro.

Dutch Woerner was one of the later. 

In the early 1920's the Bronx-born Bill Woerner blazed a three-sport path through Fordham's hallowed halls. You couldn't open the sports page of a New York newspaper without seeing his name mentioned in conjunction with some Fordham victory. By the time he graduated in 1924, Dutch was captain of the basketball team, All-American football hero and fleet-footed shortstop with offers sitting on the table from the St. Louis Cardinals and New York Yankees. He also had himself a business degree from a first-rate university.

For most red-blooded American kids in 1924, the career choice was obvious - pick the pro baseball career! But for Dutch Woerner and many other talented athletes, the lure of the business world was much more powerful. Countless college athletes gave up on their dreams and chose the safer, more lucrative path of a real job instead of the hard-scrabble world of pro sports. With the exception of golf or tennis at the club, their athletic career was over for good.

Fortunately for Woerner he had a third option. Because he resided in New York City - the epicenter of semi-pro baseball, a guy with his talent and name recognition could carve out a nice, well paid career for himself. Many of the other semi-pro teams in the New York/New Jersey area paid their players. The Bushwicks were not only the most successful semi-pro outfit around but they also paid the best. Depending on the level of talent, a guy signing on with Max Rosner could expect about $20 game. The average take-home salary in 1931 was about $35. Since the Bushwicks played doubleheaders on Saturday and Sunday and a weekday night game, an infielder like Woerner could go home Sunday with more than double the average man's paycheck - this on top of his regular job.

While weekdays he might be entry-level stock broker William Brendel Woerner, on weekends he emerged from the subway in Woodhaven Dutch Woerner -  star second baseman of the Brooklyn Bushwicks.

Dutch anchored the Bushwick's infield from 1931 through 1936. During those years he was consistently in the top five for batting average and local newspaper coverage marveled at both his clutch hitting and his ability to cover the infield "like a circus tent". Woerner's day job sometimes clashed with his weekend athletic career and he had to miss some games over the years, temporarily retiring during the '36 season so he could dedicate seven days a week to his work. The following summer he joined the rival Springfield Greys. He was batting lead-off as usual in a July 3rd game against the New York Black Yankees when pitcher Roy Williams drilled Dutch in the head with a fastball. Woerner collapsed with a fractured skull and he was raced to South Nassau Communities Hospital where he hovered between life and death for seven days. He eventually recovered after a long hospital stay but he never played baseball again. As a side note to Woerner's beaning, the Greys experimented with wearing leather polo helmets borrowed from a local country club during a game, one of the earlier recorded attempts to develop a batting helmet.

As for Dutch Woerner, he apparently got out of the brokerage business and opened a bar and grill in Lakewood, New Jersey. In 1958 he returned to Brooklyn where he was inducted into the "Sandlot Hall of Fame". While it sure wasn't Cooperstown, Dutch could look back at a nice semi-pro career that enabled him to make almost as much as a big leaguer, while at the same time raising a family, advancing in his career and enjoy being regarded as a first-rate ballplayer - all without traveling further than a subway token away from home. The Brooklyn Eagle's reporter covering the event that day in 1958 remarked how good the former shortstop looked more than twenty years after he hung up his spikes...
 

186. Joe Press: A Semi-Pro Scouting for the Pros

This is the first of 5 Bushwicks Stories in 5 days. For the introduction to the Bushwicks and this series please go HERE first. 

I wanted to start out this series with Joe Press, the team's manager from 1935 until they folded in 1951. Through Joe Press and the Bushwicks, the New York Yankees had a nice pipeline of young New York/New Jersey born talent that flowed into their farm system. Joe Press represents the Bushwick's unique role in developing raw semi-pro talent into big league material.

Since the Bushwicks were founded around 1917, the team's owner Max Rosner had held the  managers reigns. However by the early 1930's the once local semi-pro team had become bigger and more financially profitable than many minor league franchises. When his silent partner Nat Strong passed away after the 1934 season, Rosner recognized the need to step back and hire a dedicated manager to pilot the Bushwicks. Instead of tapping a retired big leaguer, Rosner snagged local semi-pro legend Joe Press. 

The Bronx-born Joe Press was in his early 30's and although he never played professional baseball, he had been managing the New York Metropolitan area's best semi-pro teams since he was a teenager. Even lacking a professional pedigree, Joe Press was a respected man. After dropping out of school at age 14, the teenage Press skippered the Bronx Orioles, then took over the Highbridge Athletics, a traveling team that featured future Hall of Famer Frankie Frisch, a Fordham University student at the time. By age 19 he was running the Bronx Giants, one of the best semi-pro outfits of the pre World War I period. During the war Press managed a team for the Seabury Shipyards which boasted several big leaguers trying to avoid the draft. After the war he moved up steadily to better clubs, first College Point, then the Springfield Greys. The veteran baseball man gained a reputation of not only assembling top-notch teams but also for his role in finding and nurturing home-grown talent for professional baseball. Among his biggest finds were Tony Cuccinello of the Dodgers and a steady stream of prospects for the Yankees. As one of the most experienced men in the Metropolitan semi-pro circuit, Press' word was good enough for Yankees super-scout Paul Kritchell to hop on the subway and take a look at whoever the manager recommended. The two men formed an unofficial working relationship that lasted into the 1950's.

By 1930 Press was leading the Brooklyn Bay Parkways, the Bushwick's biggest rival and coincidentally owned by Max Rosner's little brother Joe. When Max made the decision to give up the reigns he received permission from his brother to ask Press. 

For Joe Press the decision was a no brainer - the Bushwicks paid the best salary outside professional baseball and were the New York Yankees of the semi-pros. He could hope to climb no higher than the Bushwicks. There was one thing standing in the way of his taking the helm of the mighty Bushwicks: their popular outfielder Overton Tremper. Tremper was a former Brooklyn Dodger, the best Bushwick player and a clubhouse leader. Two of those three attributes posed a problem to Joe Press - unlike Tremper, the manager-to-be had no pro experience and the ex-big leaguer's leadership on the team could pose a threat to Press' authority. To accommodate Press, Rosner released Tremper who was immediately snatched up by another Bushwick rival, the Springfield Greys.

Now with his hand at the tiller of the best semi-pro outfit in the area, Press began re-making the team. With the exception of a few core players with big league experience, Press discarded all the high-priced but otherwise washed up veterans. Instead, he focused on college students and graduates who for family or career reasons turned down professional baseball contracts in order to stay in New York. To many it was more advantageous to hold down a lucrative weekday job and play ball for the Bushwicks on the weekends. Often the combined salaries added up to more than an average player would have made in the big leagues. Joe Press was no stranger to holding down a day job - since he left school he ran a business delivering bacon and ham throughout the city.

Under Press' leadership the Bushwicks became an even stronger team. His youth movement worked well with the core veterans like former Giant Al Cuccinello and former Red Charlie Hargreaves. The revolving door of young players were complimented with appearances by former big league stars on their way down the ladder of pro baseball. Lefty Gomez, Waite Hoyt, Dazzy Vance and George Earnshaw were among the fading stars who donned the Bushwick colors. In fact, Joe Press might hold the record for managing the largest number of Hall of Famers, all be it some for only a game or two.

Like he had previously with Springfield and the Bay Parkways, Joe Press acted as an unofficial scout for the New York Yankees. Working closely with Paul Kritchell, Press supplied the Yanks with a steady stream of local prospects, all battle tested and evaluated before hand by the Bushwicks manager. The pipeline worked both ways, as in the case of Marius Russo. The former Long Island University student originally caught the attention of Kritchell while pitching for the Bay Parkways. The Yankees scout arranged for Russo to be transferred to the Bushwicks where he could play against a higher caliber of opponents, thus enabling Kritchell to better evaluate his talent. With Bushwick Russo not only faced the best white semi-pros, but also against various big league all-star teams that came into Dexter Park throughout the summer. Perhaps more importantly, Russo and the Bushwicks also got the opportunity to play against the best non-white players in the country.

The Bushwicks can claim a unique position in baseball history in that they played against the very best blackball teams on a regular basis. From the early 1920's through the team's disbandment in 1951, the Bushwicks were host to the Pittsburgh Crawfords, Homestead Grays, Baltimore Elites, Kansas City Monarchs, New York Cubans - you name the team and they came to Dexter Park. Until his death in 1935, Max Rosner's silent partner was Nat Strong, the Philadelphia-based booking agent who worked closely with most of the blackball teams on the east of Chicago. This partnership ensured that Bushwick faced the best talent excluded from organized baseball. While the Bushwicks crushed any white teams that ventured to Woodhaven, the team held their own or more often than not were bested by the top-level black teams. Because of this unique opportunity, both Bushwick players and fans were able to evaluate first hand the talent level of Negro League players. And here lies Bushwicks and Joe Press' part in one of the more frustrating stories in baseball history.

In the spring of 1949 the Birmingham Black Barons ventured north to play the New York Cubans at the Polo Grounds. They also scheduled a double header with the Bushwicks. The Barons were the defending Negro League Champions and boasted a great roster of veteran blackball players. For more than a decade Joe Press had had the unique opportunity to play against the best black players in the country. Now with Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby integrating the National and American Leagues, Press was perhaps the most knowledgeable white man on black baseball talent. His role as an unofficial Yankees scout gave the Bronx Bombers the leading edge in first hand scouting. 

Only the Yankees didn't care.

When Birmingham pulled into Dexter Park, Press made a note of two players in particular - second baseman Piper Davis and outfielder Willie Mays. He notified Kritchell of the two, further singling out Mays as the can't-miss prospect. The Yankees passed. The New york Giants didn't. It's apparent from his surviving correspondence that Press was frustrated with the Yankees refusal to sign a black ball player: "Within the past two years I have given you reports on practically every player, with the exception of a very few, that have been signed to contracts by other teams. . . . You could have had practically all of them, just for the asking".

I don't know for sure if the Yankees were completely against having a black player don the saintly pinstripes for racist reasons. They may very well have been. But then again, if the Dodgers or Giants or Braves farm system was pumping out Mantles, Fords, Rizzutos, Martins and Berras by the dozens, who would needed all the headaches that came along with integration?

Anyway, for Joe Press it was probably the only disappointment of his long semi-pro career. The Bronx dropout and bacon and ham delivery man who never played a day of professional baseball in his life could say he launched the careers of dozens of big leaguers, managed countless Hall of Famers and personally held the reigns of the most successful semi-pro team in baseball history, the Bushwicks of Brooklyn.

97. Sam Nahem: Subway Sam vs. The World

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.

95. Buck Lai: The Celestial Speed Demon

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 Travelers. The team was made up of Hawaiians 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.

18. Overton Tremper

Overton who? Overton Tremper, that's who. Never heard of him? Well, don't feel so bad, unless you lived in Brooklyn in the 1930's chances are you would have never heard of him or his team, the Bushwicks of Brooklyn. Back during the 1920's up until the advent of televised games in the 1950's semi-pro baseball was a big thing for many parts of the country where there was no chance of seeing a real major league game in person. Thousands of real talented teams sprung up all over the land and most major league players began their careers playing for teams like the Bushwicks. Semi-pro teams were also a place where over-the-hill major leaguers could wring a few extra dollars more out of their career before retiring from the game. Grover Cleveland Alexander, Rogers Hornsby and Dazzy Vance are 3 Hall of Famers who did just that. But the Brooklyn Bushwicks were a little bit better than most semi-pro outfits. Owner Max Rosner put lots of money into his team and even had their own stadium, Dexter Park. Teams travelled far and wide to challenge the Bushwicks, more often than not returning in defeat but slightly richer as Dexter Park regularly drew crowds of 12,000 during its heyday. The Bushwicks battles with the best negro league teams were legendary and real big league stars often stopped by to play a game or two with the "Kandy Kids" as they were known for their blue and orange uniforms. Dazzy Vance, Babe Ruth, Joe Dimaggio all played games for the Bushwicks and a young college kid, Lou Gehrig tried out but failed to make the team. But the regular roster players, such as Overton Tremper, were as equally well known and idolized.

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in economics, Tremper played parts of 2 seasons with the Brooklyn Dodgers before being sent down to the minors. Deciding that it wasn’t the lifestyle he wanted he returned to Brooklyn where he became a high school teacher. On weekends and nights from 1931 to 1934, Tremper was the star outfielder for the semi-pro powerhouse Brooklyn Bushwicks who played major league caliber baseball against all levels of teams. Many ballplayers were actually able to earn more money playing for the Bushwicks than they could playing in the majors as well as having a regular paycheck from their day job. Many major league stars played for or against the Bushwicks and their games against the best negro league teams were legendary. Tremper later earned a master's in education from N.Y.U. in 1938 and coached various semi-pro teams on Long Island. He died in 1996.