140. Oscar Bielaski: Poles and Bats

There was a time when I was growing up when I had no idea what I was. I mean, I knew basically what I was - a 6 or 7 year-old boy growing up in New Jersey, just like all the other kids on my block. Then came the day when I suddenly had another name to describe what I was: "a Polack". It was one of the Irish kids' father from the next block who called me that. He was a rummy and there was always a stream of exotic-sounding words that shot out of his mouth as he stumbled home from the tavern, but this time it was directed at me. Later I asked my father what that word meant. I can still see the red in his face when I repeated "Polack" to him. After asking who'd called me that, he sat me down at the kitchen table and explained to me that what it meant was that my family was originally from a place called Poland. He went on to carefully say that while being from Poland is not bad, the word "Polack" is not a nice term. The proper word is "Pole" to describe a person from Poland. Having no idea of the world beyond Manhattan Island, hearing that my family came from some far away place was, well, neat. I knew both sets of grandparents spoke a different language when they didn't want me to know what they were discussing, now it was all starting to make sense. It was a little later when one of those Irish kids started in on the Polack jokes that I started to get the meaning of being lumped into an ethnic category. I didn't like it. After dispensing a few busted lips and bloody noses the Polack jokes dried up, but it started me on a life-long interest in my family's history and the land they came from. It was only natural that as a baseball fan I began looking for famous ballplayers of Polish heritage - Ted Kluszewski, Carl Yastrzemski and the brothers Coveleski were the obvious ones. Then came Al Simmons, aka Aloys Szymanski and Stan The Man Musial. If you dig deep you can find plenty of Poles in the big leagues, many with Americanized names like Johnny Podres and Jack Quinn. And then that got me thinking, who was the very first Polish-American big leaguer?

The people of the former kingdom of Poland, effectively wiped off the map at the end of the 18th century, seethed under the thumb of the combined rule of Prussia, Austria-Hungary and Russia. Their language was banned, religion eradicated and men conscripted into foreign armies. While many other countries under similar circumstances bent and withered, the Poles developed a proud and stubborn resilience inherent in their psyche to this very day. Under penalty of imprisonment they refused to forget their language and subversive schools and societies popped up to keep it alive. Their Catholic faith became stronger through threat of death and Polish soldiers honed their already formidable warrior reputation while biding their time in the armies of others. Freedom and the idea of liberty found a place in the heart of every Pole. By November of 1830 the Polish people had had enough and launched an insurrection against the Russian government in the eastern part of the country. Although terribly over matched in both numbers and weapons, the Poles fought valiantly capturing the attention of the world's press who overwhelmingly sided with the underdog Poles. The end came in September of the following year when the Russians succeeded in taking Warsaw after a bitter last-ditch stand by the Poles. It is this bitter determination to resist that became the root of the "stupid Polack" jokes. The Poles' natural inclination to fight back at all costs which they see as their only way to be free was perceived by other ethnicity's as stupid and useless. 

Survivors of the 1830 insurrection scattered to all corners of the globe in what became the first large wave of Polish immigrants. One ex-soldier, Russian-trained officer Alexander Bielaski, seriously wounded leading a commando-like unit during the final battle of Warsaw, landed in the United States. Settling in Illinois he made the acquaintance of a young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln. He made a living teaching sword fighting, then relocated to Washington, D.C. and put his engineering education to use for the U.S. General Land Office. Before Civil War broke out he took a wife, Mary and the two had six children: Rosetta, Victor, Oscar, Agnes Alexander and Eugene.

Being a bonafide, European-trained warrior, it was only natural the when war broke out Bielaski would offer his valuable experience to his adapted country. Quickly appointed a Captain he organized the Federal Army for it's first campaign in the Western theater, an attack on the Mississippi River Valley. It wasn't long afterwards that Captain Bielaski met his death in battle. Serving on the staff of General McClernand, Bielaski could have stayed out of combat but during the Battle of Belmont in Missouri he volunteered to lead troops at the front. Leading a massed attack, the Captain had his horse shot out from under him, then grabbed a Springfield Rifle from one of his fallen men and led the assault on foot. Seeing the flag bearer go down he dropped his rifle, took hold of the American flag and waved it aloft to inspire his men. As the attack continued he was hit in the head with a bullet, dead before he hit the ground.

After the heroic death of his father, 16 year-old Oscar ran away to join the army. Signing on with Troop A of the 11th New York Cavalry, he aimed to take up the fight just like his father. The 11th Cavalry had campaigned first around Virginia and Maryland, then penetrated into Mississippi and Louisiana. When Bielaski joined them in September of 1864, the regiment was camped in Louisiana awaiting orders. In the idle down time Bielaski learned a game that was spreading rapidly from regiment to regiment on both sides of the conflict - baseball. After serving as a trooper for a month his superiors found out he wasn't the 19 year-old he claimed he was and promptly discharged him from further service. Though I'm sure he was disappointed to have been thwarted in his attempt to avenge his father's death, the discharge may have saved his life: a month after he was sent home most of the regiment drowned when the troop ship North America sank off the Florida coast.

Bielaski returned to Washington and brought his interest in baseball with him. Still wanting to serve his country he joined the Navy when he turned 19 but missed out on any action. When his hitch was up he returned to Washington and continued to play baseball. He apparently trained as a clerk, which would have given him the opportunity to pursue his beloved sport since it was commonly played by young urban professionals. 

Apparently baseball had become a family affair for the Bielaski's as Oscar played in the same infield as his younger brother Alex on the Rosedale Club. Records show he then played for the Capitol and Union clubs in the years before any organized national leagues existed. In 1872, a year after the first professional league, the National Association was formed, Oscar Bielaski was signed by his hometown Washington Nationals, making him the very first professional Polish-American baseball player.

The Nats were a terrible club in 1872, losing all 11 games they stumbled through. Bielaski was one of their starting outfielders and though batting a paltry .174, he led the team in runs scored with 13, so when he got on base he at least made the most of it. The Nationals disbanded at the end of the season and were replaced by the Blue Legs who finished last of 9 teams but managed to win 8 of 39 games. Bielaski's .283 average was second best on the team and was about average for the National Association. He also led the team in walks. The Blue Legs folded too at the conclusion of the season and Bielaski packed his kit and moved over to Baltimore.

Besides having a terrible baseball name, the 1874 Baltimore Canaries were another lousy ball club, finishing in last in the National Association. Bielaski batted .241 and his 3 stolen bases led the team. Though this doesn't sound like much, Bielaski was a good player on bad teams. Newspapers called him a sure fielder and a good man to have in the clutch. Problem was, he was getting old and by this time he'd married his wife Mary and had a child on the way. Playing on lousy ball clubs that folded every Fall wasn't going to cut it for much longer.

In 1875 Bielaski migrated to Chicago to join the White Stockings. He hit .239, helping the team finish just under .500 for the season. When Al Spalding formed his own White Stockings the following year and entered them in the new National League, Oscar Bielaski was recruited to play outfield for them. Finally Bielaski had a berth on a real contender and the team, led by Cap Anson, Cal McVey, Deacon White and Al Spalding, stormed to the top of the standings becoming the very first National League pennant winners. 

That great championship season was the last for Bielaski. Taking his .243 career average with him, he returned home to Washington, D.C. where a stable career as a clerk in the auditor's office at the Navy Yard awaited him. In between raising his 3 sons and 2 daughters, the old outfielder kept his hand in the game by coaching teams made up of Navy Yard personnel. On November 8, 1911 while boarding a streetcar at 6th and G Streets, he had a massive heart attack and died on the way to the hospital. Following a funeral service attended by many ex-ballplayers, Oscar Bielaski was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. His simple headstone is inscribed with his name, company and regiment, but nothing about his being the very first Polish-American to play professional baseball.

The Bielaski family produced a few other notables - remember Oscar's younger infield-playing brother Alex? He became a very highly respected Reverend in the Methodist Episcopal Church. One of his sons, also a stand-out high school and college ballplayer, A. Bruce Bielaski, became the head of the Bureau of Investigation before J. Edgar Hoover (see a trend here with directors of the F.B.I. initializing their first name?). 


So that's the story of the first Polish-American professional ballplayer. I went back and forth over the Christmas holiday about this story. You see, though I'm proud of and identify with my Polish heritage, I'm first and foremost an American. My family all came here with dreams of becoming a part of something big and great - the United States of America. A country so special that it attracts people of all religions, colors and ideals would never have become that way if everyone insisted on clinging to those hyphens many insert before the word "American". Teddy Roosevelt (a life-long hero of mine) said it eloquently and succinctly in 1915:

"There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism... a hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts "native" before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance. But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else."

One of the reasons I love baseball so much is that it seems to have been one of the main things that helped new immigrants blend in and become American. The game was wholly an American one, a complex one but something everyone could learn if they tried hard enough. It wasn't something brought by Italians or Mexicans or Irish - it was something that was already here, something that could be found everywhere, no matter where one settled in the country. To play and understand baseball was your entry ticket to greater things. It made you an American.

That's why I struggled with this story. To call attention to "the first" anything - Pole, Jew, Italian, Japanese - simply erects walls that baseball had previously eliminated. I guess I finally decided to post this story tonight because of the story I related at the start of this piece. The day when that juicer called me a Polack, it helped me discover what it meant to be a Pole and the contributions Poles brought to the United States and how those blended and added to the contributions of all the other nationalities that make up the fabric of this nation, and that made me truly understand what this great country really was all about.

125. Minnie Miñoso: Big Before He Was Minnie

The strapping young man from the rural providences stood tall and straight as he approached Rene Midesten, the manager of the Ambrosia Candy baseball team. His skin was dark as night and his body was as strong as a bull from working in the cane fields. For the past 4 or 5 years the young man before him had traveled the country making a name for himself playing amateur ball for sugar plantations and mining company teams. Now 16, the time had come to make the move to the big city of Havana and become a professional ballplayer.

The Ambrosia Candy team was one of many factory and government teams that played in the Havana Semi-Pro league. Once a ballplayer got on one of those teams and did well, it was just a short time before the professional Cuban League came calling. Midesten listened passively as the young man described how he could pitch and catch and hit - he'd heard it all before. Every niño from the sticks thought he was the next Martin Dihigo. But as the young man talked he was also watching Midesten's team work out on the field behind him. The third baseman made one bad play after another. Besides pitch, catch and hit, he told the manager, he was also a third baseman. Midesten's ears perked up and moments later for the princely salary of $2 a game and a guaranteed job in the company's garage, Orestes "Minnie" Miñoso became a professional ballplayer.

Two years later and after moving his way up the semi-pro ladder, Miñoso was signed by the Marianao Tigers, one of the Cuban Winter League's best teams. Besides featuring the best Cubans, the winter league attracted the finest Negro league players from the United States. The level of play was top draw and to say the pay was better would be an understatement. Miñoso signed for $150 a month which was quickly bumped up to $200 when the ball club realized how good he was. By the time the season ended he'd batted .301 and was the 1945-46 Rookie of the Year.

In the years before Jackie Robinson, a Cuban ballplayer had two options if he wanted to play in the United States: if he was light skinned with wavy hair, he went into organized ball. If he was a darker hue with kinky hair, it was the Negro leagues. You really couldn't get any darker than Miñoso, so it was the Negro leagues.

The Negro National League had among its clubs a team called the New York Cubans. Though not exclusively made up of Latin players, the Cubans were the main club the Latins gravitated to when they wanted to play ball in the States. The Cubans played most of their games at the Polo Grounds and though they hadn't won a pennant yet, were always among the finest in the National League. It just so happened that one of Miñoso's coaches with Marianao was Jose Fernandez who was the manager of the New York Cubans. By the time the Cuban season had ended Fernandez had convinced the owner of the Cubans, Alex Pompez, to offer Miñoso a contract.

There was a potential problem. The Pasquel brothers, Jorge and Bernardo, who ran the upstart Mexican Baseball League was offering staggering amounts of cash to professional ballplayers in order to stock their new league. Because the Pasquel's were persuading players to break their contracts with existing teams they were considered outlaws and were physically thrown out of many ballparks when they were caught talking to players. The huge salaries they were offering for the upcoming 1946 season was more than many players could imagine and they succeeded in luring a number of major leaguers in addition many of the finest black and Latin players. While the money was good, the risks were high - in short order organized baseball decreed that anyone breaking a contract to play in Mexico were banned from playing in the major or minor leagues. Latin and black ballplayers also were affected because the Cuban Winter League was under a tentative contract with organized ball as well. Even if a ballplayer was not signed by a major or minor league team, he was still ineligible to play in Cuba if he appeared in the Mexican League. It was big risk and when Miñoso was confronted with a large duffle bag of cash and a 2 year contract for $30,000, the young star turned it down flat. He wanted to play in the Unites States.
Miñoso signed his name to the contract Alex Pompez sent and for $150 a month he became the New York Cubans' rookie third baseman.

Playing their home games in the Polo Grounds, the rookie batted a respectable .309 in 33 games for the New York Cubans in 1946. Making his talent known, his salary was doubled to $300 a month to ensure he wasn't tempted by the roving Mexican League recruiters. Miñoso enjoyed playing in the United States and with his generous income he soon established himself as one of the Negro National League's best dressed ballplayers. Nap Gulley, who played against Miñoso in those years swore the Cuban had 40 or 50 immaculate suits. He went on to state that he could have been a magazine model. One other thing Miñoso prided himself on was his language skills. While some other teammates chose to speak only Spanish, Miñoso tried to communicate solely in English. He figured that he was playing in America so he should know the language. It's interesting to note that although players and sports writers always made comments about his accented English and rogue grammar, Miñoso none-the-less was proudly fluent in the tongue of his adapted homeland.

Besides his fashion sense and budding bilingualism, Miñoso impressed his teammates by eagerly learning all he could from the veterans. He watched the stars on the opposing teams and continually improved his craft. Fellow ballplayers soon learned that no matter how well he played his game, Miñoso strived to do it even better.
The next season Miñoso took off, leading the team with a .294 average and establishing himself as the best lead-off man in the league. Black fans across the nation appreciated his play and he was voted to represent the East team in that year's East-West All Star Game in Chicago. He played the whole game but went 0-3 as the West won 5-2. Along with slugger Pat Scantlebury and pitchers Dave Barnhill and Luis Tiant, the speedy Cuban led his team to the pennant. In the Negro World Series against the Negro American League champion Cleveland Buckeyes, Miñoso batted a remarkable .423 as the Cubans defeated Cleveland in 6 games.

The following season Miñoso continued to improve and by the All-Star break in July was batting about .400. Again he was recognized by the sporting public by being selected to his second East-West Game. This year he went 1 for 4 with a stolen base in another loss to the West. By now Miñoso was undeniably a star and it was tempting for him to think organized ball could be a possibility. The stakes were high in that 1948 All-Star Game as the stands were crawling with major league scouts and every player knew it was their best shot at making the big time. Due to the popularity of the game and also presumably to give the players even more of a shot at showcasing their talents to a mixed audience, a second East-West Game was played in the middle of August in New York. Before the game, Miñoso's teammate Jose Santiago was approached by the Cleveland Indians' scout. Besides Jose, the Indians were looking at Miñoso as well. Realizing this was his chance, Miñoso performed spectacularly. In his first at bat he stretched a chintzy single into a double and later knocked in the East's winning run. By the time he'd showered, Miñoso's contract had been purchased by the Cleveland Indians.

Sent to the Dayton Indians, Miñoso hit .525 in 11 games and the Indians made him a big leaguer the following year. His famed nickname "Minnie", probably a by product of too many sprained Caucasian tongues trying to pronounce his last name properly, came shortly afterwards. All-in-all, Miñoso spent almost 30 years spread over 5 decades playing baseball in Cuba, the United States and Mexico. Miñoso is one of those borderline players who always seem to come up short when the Hall of Fame voting comes around. Though I might not be as enlightened as a real live sportswriter who gets the final vote on such things, I am under the impression guys like Miñoso, Gil Hodges and Sammy T. Hughes deserve a plaque in the Hall more than say, Ron Santo, Lefty Gomez or Phil Rizzuto. But hey, I'm just an artist and it's baseball and without what-ifs like this, what else would there be to talk about during those long winter months, soccer?

114. Joe Jackson: Shoeless Joe in North Jersey

Well, no set of Black Sox would be complete without Ol' Shoeless Joe. Often portrayed as the hapless victim of the fix, I personally believe he got himself willingly into the mess and spent the rest of his life regretting it, but then again, who really knows.

As with all the other Black Sox, much of Jackson's baseball career after the fix has been shrouded in speculation. Growing up in Northern New Jersey I would hear stories of Shoeless Joe's appearance on local ball fields back in the 1920's but like so many other great baseball lore passed down through the generations, you never know what's fire and what's smoke. Over the years I looked around for evidence of Jackson in Jersey and one day someone sent me two photos of him playing in Hackensack. He wore a pinstripe uniform and a dark cap with a "P" on it. The two photos intrigued me and I wanted to know more about them but ran into dead ends. Then one day I got into contact with T.W. from BlackBetsy.com and he gave me the low-down of Jackson's day in Hackensack. So, I think it's fitting to cap off this series with a look at the day in the life of a fallen big league star, in this case Joe Jackson and the afternoon of Sunday, June 25th, 1922.

The man standing in the shade of the building was deeply suntanned and wrinkles ran round his face, making him seem older than his 32 years. He wore a black suit, finely tailored, though of an older style cut and starting to show it's age around the edges. In his rough, calloused hand he gripped a leather travel bag, which, upon closer examination, showed that the ornate brass plaque between the handles had been crudely altered: someone had scratched away all traces of the original engraved initials.

The man stood outside the box office entrance to the town ballpark. It was a small, but well built ball yard, but in actuality he hardly took notice. After all, he'd played in a different one almost every weekend that summer and now they were all starting to blend together. If he hadn't stopped at the coffee shop back in the train station he'd probably have had no idea where exactly he was, which, by the way, was Hackensack, New Jersey.

After standing around in the late morning sun for a few minutes a caravan of dirty open cars turned into the dirt lot beside the ballpark. Stopping in a cloud of dust, a dozen men poured out. These were to be his teammates for today's ballgame. He watched as the men unloaded canvas bags of equipment. The oldest looking one of the group saw him standing near the box office door and walked quickly over to him, extending his hand. He introduced himself as the manager. In his other hand he offered up a manila envelope. The suntanned man opened it and pretended to count the money inside and quickly shoved it in his coat pocket. It was time to get ready.

The locker room was a locker room in name only. The small room was damp and had 2 long wooden benches that ran the length of the room and the walls had a shelf about neck high opposite each bench and a row of hooks beneath that. Each of the ballplayers staked out a space on one of the benches and unpacked their small traveling bags. Most of the players talked loudly with one another, laughing and throwing around swear words. Their accents were harsh to his ears and sometimes not too easy to follow. A few of the players stared unabashedly at the suntanned man and he began to grow more uncomfortable than he usually felt. As the suntanned man undressed he hung his jacket from the hook and folded his black pants and silk pink shirt. Running his hand over the folded silk garment to smooth it out before placing it on the shelf, he quietly touched the gold embroidered "J" monogram over the pocket.

The suntanned man removed a worn baseball uniform from his leather satchel. It was of a rougher quality wool than he was used to but it was a baseball uniform just the same. There was no name on the front, just black pinstripes. The cap he retrieved from the satchel was black as well, with a white button and white "P" on the front - a souvenir of an afternoon up in Poughkeepsie the week before. His name was "Joe Nutter" that day.

The manager appeared with another ballplayer in tow. He introduced him as "Smith" but the suntanned man recognized him as a young pitcher with Toronto. He couldn't recall his name, but it sure as hell wasn't Smith. The manager repeated the story he'd already heard - that his Westwood town team, traditionally a local powerhouse, had been unexpectedly clobbered by Hackensack a month before. There was always a heated rivalry between the two towns and the games always attracted spirited betting, the action being covered by heavies from nearby New York City and Newark. Westwood swore Hackensack had a few ringers on their team that day and needless to say much money was lost by Westwood's fans that day. Plenty of people were pissed off and thirsty for revenge. Taking up a collection, Westwood decided to purchase some insurance for today's game, hence the manila envelope of cash. Today, the suntanned man's name was "Josephs", at least that's what it said on the lineup card.

By this time he could hear the roar of the crowd. Through the row of filthy windows that lined one wall above the shelves he could make out much movement as hundreds of people jostled for seats. He could hear men shouting and children squealing. Someone threw something through one of the open windows and every few minutes some wiseguy would bang on the glass and shout something nasty. One of the suntanned man's temporary teammates sidled up and said: "They know you're here."

Emerging out from the darkness of the locker room he pulled his cap down as low as he could over his eyes to protect them from the sun. The crowd went wild when they recognized him.

"My God, it's Shoeless Joe Jackson!"

Spectators were spilling out onto the field and bits of paper littered the field. Glancing out to center field he could see it was cleared of fans, which made him feel a little better. The roar was deafening. There must be more than 1000 here today, probably more. Ugly, twisted faces shouted unintelligible words at him. Small children stared and women craned their heads and stood on tip-toes to catch a glimpse of him. He'd seen it all before. He did this every weekend.

The game wasn't much to remember as far as he was concerned. It was a standard affair - the Hackensack manager came over to the Westwood bench and in between swearwords made it clear his team would be playing the game under protest. Westwood held back the Toronto pitcher until he was unleashed in the 3rd inning after Hackensack scored a few runs. It was smart managing as it gave the gamblers time to settle the odds before the Toronto kid shut them down for the rest of the game.

In between hitting a home run, double and two singles there were a few notable incidents. A news photographer ran onto the field while Westwood was batting and attempted to take a photo of him as he sat on the bench. Two of his teammates started shoving the newsman and threatened to beat the hell out of him if he didn't get back to the stands. When Westwood's catcher reared back, ready to throw a punch, the fella ran off so fast he left his hat behind. The catcher stomped on it with his spikes and the rest of the ballplayers laughed. A few times the game was stopped, not by the umpire but because everyone paused to watch a fist fight in the bleachers. He noticed that the couple of policemen stood by and did nothing - wading into a crowd like this was pointless and after a few minutes the fighting stopped on its own anyway. At a few points in the afternoon the play was stopped while the players collected some of the larger items that were thrown onto the grass. Bottles of beer, scorecards, newspapers and even a few straw hats were picked up and thrown in a pile behind home plate. One call by the amateur umpire cause a heck of a row. When he called Westwood's left fielder out for supposedly not touching first base on his way to an easy double, the bench cleared and for a time it looked like the poor umpire was going to catch a beating. He sat on the bench and watched. The guy missed touching first by a mile anyway. A few innings later a Westwood fan charged out of the stands and accused a Hackensack outfielder of putting a concealed second baseball in play when he couldn't get to a deeply hit fly ball. He just pulled his cap lower over his eyes and thought about his wife.

He was proud of one play he made that day, not at bat but in the outfield. On a long ball hit out to him in center, he'd made the catch and threw a straight liner back to the surprised catcher who tagged out the equally surprised runner to end the inning. The bases had been loaded and it squelched a rally and when all was wrapped up it probably made the difference in Westwood's 9 to 7 defeat of Hackensack. Most of the crowd cheered but some threw even more crap on the field. This wasn't Comiskey Park.

After the game he tried to dress as quickly as possible. Half the team was drunk and in various stages of undress. One of the guys threw his spikes through one of the glass windows. He was too busy packing his leather satchel to find out why. Someone was pounding on the locker room door but no one answered. After a while he slipped his black suit coat over his pink silk shirt, once again obscuring the embroidered "J" above the pocket. He opened the locker room door and ignoring the lingering spectators in the parking lot headed off towards the train station, trying to remember where he was going to be next weekend and what his name would be when he got there.

The whole concept of this story was derived from a June 28, 1922 New York American newspaper article. It is one of the most moving articles I've come across dealing with the banned ballplayers. The writer had been at the Westwood game and the game details are as I have described here. Besides giving a summary of the whereabouts of the other Black Sox, writer Arthur Robinson includes fascinating details such as what Jackson wore that day and mentioning that his initials had been scratched off his travel bag. It is a grim and unflinching story and reading it all I could think about was how it made Jackson and the other seven men seem like they were stuck in some sort of sad baseball purgatory. Perhaps that's a fitting end to the perpetrators of baseball's saddest moment... but what the hell do I know, I'm just an simple artist.

I just wanted to give credit again to a few sources that besides first-hand contemporary newspaper articles, were the best places to glean hard-to-find information regarding the post 1920 lives of the Black Sox:

BlackBetsy.com a great website and more importantly it's staffed by a group of very knowledgeable Joe Jackson experts who were more than willing to share their groundbreaking research on the Black Sox Scandal. I owe much of the Joe Jackson article to T.W. and I just want to thank him for his kindness.

After The Black Sox: The Swede Risberg Story by Alan Muchlinski. Simply excellent chunk of research that shines a light onto the later years of Swede and his former teammates who he played against.

Outlaw Baseball Players in the Copper League: 1925-1927 by Lynn Bevill. A M.A. thesis published online that is the best source I've found that really explains the role of the Black Sox in the Copper League but also does a great job at telling the story of the towns and how the league operated.

Blacksoxfan.com No list of sources would be complete without a big thanks to this site dedicated to the Black Sox. The authors downloadable pdf of every existing outlaw and semi-pro game featuring a member of the Black Sox is just a monumental achievement and unbelievably helpful in tracking the movements of the eight men.

113. Swede Risberg: "Why work, when you can fool the public"

I hope you are enjoying the "After The Black Sox" series so far. When I was starting the Infinite Baseball Card site the very first drawings I attempted were of these 8 players. Besides the 1919 World Series fix being an interest of mine, drawing a set of 8 let me see how the style I was developing would look as a series. The originals were pretty basic and sparse compared to the ones you are looking at now, but the idea was there, the firm black line with bold blocks of color. I had wanted to re-draw these guys again but after getting to Happy Felsch and Eddie Cicotte, I got sidetracked by so many other great players who needed a card. Now, seeing them all together in all their post-1919 glory, I have to say it is a nice looking series. Anyway, here is the story of Swede Risberg's later years, leaving only one more, Shoeless Joe, who will make his appearance next week...

Swede Risberg has gone down in baseball lore as the muscle behind the 1919 fix. Besides having a nasty reputation that he cultivated long before he broke into the majors, his threat to murder Joe Jackson if he spilled his guts caused Shoeless Joe to make the infamous statement: "The Swede is a hard guy."

The Swede was born in San Francisco when it was still part of the "wild west" and grew up tough. His old man was a lumberjack from Sweden, and I don't think it would surprise anyone to know that that's where his nickname was derived from. Like many of the ballplayers he played with, Swede's education ebbed at an early age. His surly disposition and quickness to use his fists to settle a disagreement probably stems from insecurity derived from his embarrassment at his lack of schooling. Or maybe he was just a bad seed. Regardless of its root, when asked why he dropped out of school in the third grade, Swede quipped it was because he refused to shave...

During his minor league career on the west coast, the Swede forged his reputation as a tough customer through numerous spurts of violence. But he also became known as a very versatile player, filling in where ever he was needed, including on the mound. The White Sox snapped him up in 1917 and although he was terrible at bat, his defensive skill kept him in the game. His scrappiness was also noted, most memorably when he fought the ferocious Ty Cobb to a draw. By 1919 he was Chicago's starting shortstop and the press tabbed him as an up-and-comer.

Much like his pal Chick Gandil, Swede was a malcontent and must have been gasoline on the fire of the already inflamed White Sox locker room. With some of the team earning what they were worth and the rest playing for peanuts due to their inability to fight for good contracts, it was easy for the bitter Swede to make the choice to join in the fix. For his part he took home $15,000, one of the few conspirators who made anything for their troubles.

After the trial, acquittal and banishment from organized ball, the Swede played around Chicago under assumed names and then joined Gandil, Cicotte, Weaver and Felsch on the "Ex-Major League Stars" barnstorming team. What should have been a lucrative tour turned into a nightmare as the team was constantly heckled in what few games they were able to book. The whole organization collapsed when Cicotte's demand for his pay earned him a severe beating from the Swede. The former ace of the White Sox pitching staff left the team, leaving behind a few of his teeth.

With his 1919 pay-off cash, the Swede had bought he and his wife a dairy farm in Minnesota and he now embarked on an 11 year career as a ballplayer for-hire. Playing mostly for town teams throughout the northern part of the Midwest, the Swede changed teams frequently because the sheer cost of hiring him was too costly for most small towns to pay for more than one season. Many towns would hire a guy like the Swede to beef up their team in order to crush neighboring villages, giving its inhabitants bragging rights and make a little bit of money for the sporting men of the area.

From Alan Muchlinski's great book we now know where the Swede spent his post-1920 career. Muchlinski tracked down obscure local newspapers and mapped out his odyssey. After the disbandment of the Ex-Major League Stars, Risberg joined the Aces of Rochester, Minnesota in 1923 and 24, then joined Happy Felsch on the Scobey, Montana Giants. He went back to Rochester for a bit of 1926 and then over to Watertown, South Dakota through 1927 and then up to Manitoba, Canada to play for a team from the town of Virden.

Swede next turns up as a back-up pitcher on an integrated team in Jamestown, North Dakota. Among his opponents was old friend Happy Felsch who frequently worked the same circuit as Risberg. During the 1930 season the Swede threw a no-hitter against LaMoure. He went 2-for-4 that afternoon and fanned seven. Though it was merely semi-pro, it still wasn't bad seeing as the Swede was almost 36 at the time. His many seasons of rough ball playing also started to take its toll on him. A spike wound, courtesy of Ty Cobb, eventually caught up with the Swede and he developed osteomyelitis, the infection of the bone marrow and his playing days were numbered. Risberg played for Sioux Falls in '31 and '32 and then retired from the game.

According to his son, Risberg made more from barnstorming than he did as a major leaguer, but things didn't go too smoothly for the Swede - he lost his savings in the stock market crash of 1929. He appears to have stayed on his Minnesota farm until the early 1960's when he moved to California and opened up a bar. Like most of his Black Sox pals, the Swede never spoke openly about what really happened back in the fall of 1919 and I'm guessing that most men didn't have the stones to ask him, either. Swede's ex-wife did say that after he was accused of fixing the series he'd respond to inquires about his part with: "why work, when you can fool the public." When Eliot Asinof was writing his ground breaking "Eight Men Out" book in the early 1960's, Risberg told the author he couldn't remember anything about it - it was too long ago. About the only Eventually losing his leg to that old spike injury, the Swede proved his toughness by outliving all the other Black Sox, dying on his 81st birthday.

I just wanted to give credit again to a few sources that besides first-hand contemporary newspaper articles, were the best places to glean hard-to-find information regarding the post 1920 lives of the Black Sox:

After The Black Sox: The Swede Risberg Story by Alan Muchlinski. Simply excellent chunk of research that shines a light onto the later years of Swede and his former teammates who he played against.

Outlaw Baseball Players in the Copper League: 1925-1927 by Lynn Bevill. A M.A. thesis published online that is the best source I've found that really explains the role of the Black Sox in the Copper League but also does a great job at telling the story of the towns and how the league operated.

Blacksoxfan.com No list of sources would be complete without a big thanks to this site dedicated to the Black Sox. The authors downloadable pdf of every existing outlaw and semi-pro game featuring a member of the Black Sox is just a monumental achievement and unbelievably helpful in tracking the movements of the eight men.

112 Lefty Williams: Baseballs, Booze and Black Sox

Continuing with the post-scandal career of the Black Sox... Buck Weaver in my mind was the most tragic character from the whole scandal because he, unlike the other 7 players, apparently did not take money or agree to fix the world series. Pitcher Lefty Williams, however, is tragic in his own special way.

Back in 1919, Williams was on the way to being one of the best left handed pitchers in the American League. After a few faltering years with the Tigers he settled down with the White Sox and went 17-8 in 1917, 6-4 in 1918 and 23-11 in 1919 and led the league in games started with 40. His E.R.A. was consistently under 3.00. He, along with Eddie Cicotte were the heart of the White Sox pitching staff and his career was only getting better. In the 1920 season, his last before he and the other crooks were booted out of the game, Williams won 22 games. Cicotte, Jackson, Risberg and Gandil's careers were winding down and you can see how they would have been tempted to take the cash, but Williams was in his prime and through his greed and poor judgement a great career ended before it began.

Originally uninterested when he was approached by Chick Gandil to throw the series, Williams supposedly relented after being informed the fix was in anyway. Lefty received only half of the promised $10,000, but this still was almost double his regular season salary (Lefty's wife claimed the grand total he received for his part was actually $150). He and the other players may have tried to call off the fix half way through, but when Lefty’s wife was threatened (even this much-repeated part of the story may be made-up) he went ahead with it. Williams lost 3 games in the series and it was in part his atrocious and suspicious play that the series came under close scrutiny.

After his banishment he stuck close with some of the other banned players in their failed attempts to form a barnstorming team that capitalized on their infamous reputation. This all came to naught when first fans heckled and ridiculed the crooked ballplayers and then word came down from the commissioners office that any man taking the field against or with any of the 8 men out were subject to banishment themselves from organized ball. Now even the lowliest town-team didn't want to risk the future careers of any of their ball players for a game against the Black Sox.

Realizing his career as a major league ballplayer was over, Lefty began to live the life of a hired-gun ballplayer, one-game stands with what ever team could meet his price. With his wife Lyria in tow, Williams traveled the country making stops in towns from Minnesota to California. In 1926 Lefty accepted an invitation to join Buck Weaver and Chick Gandil in the outlaw Copper League.

As I talked about in the Chick Gandil story, the Copper League was made up of rough and tumble wild west mining towns and with the arrival of Hal Chase in the early 1920's had become a haven for blacklisted ballplayers. By the time he showed up in Douglas, Arizona in the spring of 1926, Lefty had turned into a surly, dark figure with a serious drinking problem. He fit right in.

Williams joined his former teammate Buck Weaver who was managing the Douglas Blues, but his time there only lasted through June when he left to join the Fort Bayard Veterans team where he was probably promised more money. Fort Bayard was a former New Mexico Army post that was converted into a hospital for veterans suffering from tuberculosis and other debilitating injuries brought on by being gassed in France during the first world war (remember that the great Christy Mathewson died from T.B. after being gassed during a training exercise). Fort Bayard also featured Chick Gandil who also jumped from the Douglas team the previous season. By most accounts Lefty was an ace pitcher who only seemed to get better as he drank between innings. I'm not sure whether the booze added anything to his fastball but opposing players said it sure did make him more intimidating. As ace of the Fort Bayard team, Lefty was given more leeway when it came to team rules - he would sometimes skip showing up for games he knew he wasn't scheduled to pitch and instead spend the day at his favorite speakeasy concentrating on his drinking.

To underline the fact that Lefty was still in his prime as a pitcher, in August he tossed a no-hitter against Weaver's Douglas Blues, sending the last 20 batters back to the bench in order. Sure it was only semi-pro but a no-hitter is still a no-hitter and factor in that Lefty was probably far from being in-shape due to his heavy boozing. At the conclusion of the season Lefty joined a Copper League all-star team and toured parts of Mexico before returning to Fort Bayard where he and his wife spent the winter months.

Despite Judge Landis' strenuous efforts to shut down the Copper League, or at least get them to expel the crooked ballplayers, the league continued for the 1927 season. Williams continued to dominate the league and as Lynn Bevill records in the excellent "Outlaw Ballplayers in the Copper League 1925-1927", at the midpoint of the season Lefty was 5-2 with 23 strikeouts and just 7 walks. As he did the year before, Lefty continued playing ball after the Copper league season and toured the southwest and Mexico with a barnstorming team, this time called the Juarez Brewers.

After the barnstorming trip I have been unable to find any more evidence of Lefty playing ball again. Around this time he and his wife Lyria turned up in Southern California where they opened up a nursery business in Laguna Beach. I don't know one way or another but I am guessing his alcohol intake probably subsided because the business seemed to do well. Like most of the other Black Sox, Williams never spoke about his part in the fix and died in 1959 at the age of 66.

I just wanted to give credit again to a few sources that besides first-hand contemporary newspaper articles, were the best places to glean hard-to-find information regarding the post 1920 lives of the Black Sox:

After The Black Sox: The Swede Risberg Story by Alan Muchlinski. Simply excellent chunk of research that shines a light onto the later years of Swede and his former teammates who he played against.

Outlaw Baseball Players in the Copper League: 1925-1927 by Lynn Bevill. A M.A. thesis published online that is the best source I've found that really explains the role of the Black Sox in the Copper League but also does a great job at telling the story of the towns and how the league operated.

Blacksoxfan.com No list of sources would be complete without a big thanks to this site dedicated to the Black Sox. The authors downloadable pdf of every existing outlaw and semi-pro game featuring a member of the Black Sox is just a monumental achievement and unbelievably helpful in tracking the movements of the eight men.

111. Buck Weaver: Innocent, But Still Guilty

Out of all the Eight Men Out, Buck Weaver is the only one who elicits any kind of sympathy from me. Weaver was a product of his age, upholding the turn of the century version of the unwritten "no snitching" code that so many of today's inner-city youth hide behind when it comes time to stand up for what is right. Buck was no different - he failed the test when it came time to speak up and stop the fix his teammates put in motion back in September, 1919. For this he never stopped paying the price, forever banned from the game he loved...

Besides being a pretty good hitter, “Buck” was an outstanding fielder, to the point of being the only third baseman Ty Cobb would not steal against. As far as I'm concerned that speaks more volumes about The Ginger Kid than any statistic found in the Baseball Encyclopedia. One of the most popular men to ever play for the White Sox, Weaver apparently knew of, but refused to participate in the fixing of the 1919 Series. It was this knowledge that was used against him and he was banned along with the other seven crooked ballplayers after the 1920 season. Even his stellar batting and errorless play in the series wasn’t enough to save him.

Weaver spent 1921 proclaiming his innocence to the point of deluding himself into believing he would be absolved of his part in the fix and be let back into the game. While the other banned players formed the "Ex-Major League Stars" and attempted to tour the mid-west, Weaver refused a lucrative contract to play with them and flatly refused to have anything to do with his former teammates. One afternoon in Chicago Weaver was asked by Risberg and Felsch if he would join their team that day to which Buck haughtily replied “Nothing doing. I’ll be back in the majors soon and you guys will still be semi-pros.” At this point he still believed he would be back on the White Sox. Throughout the summers of 1921 and 1922 newspapers in the mid-west featured stories about Weaver and his supposed appearances with a variety of semi-pro teams but these turned out to be just rumors. He was home in Chicago with his wife patiently waiting to be reinstated. It wasn’t until the following year that Buck came to the realization that Judge Landis’ ruling was indeed binding.

Weaver now needed to make a living and he began hiring himself out to semi-pro teams. In July he swallowed his pride and briefly reunited with Cicotte, Jackson and Risberg on the Bastrop, Louisiana ball club. He also played that summer with a team called “Sorg‘s Ice Creams” from Reedsburg, Wisconsin. He reportedly hit .369 that season and played against Happy Felsch who was roaming the outfield for the Twin Cities Red Sox.

1925 found Weaver in Arizona where he was recruited to play in the outlaw Copper League. This rough and tumble semi-pro circuit was made up of wild west mining towns and was a haven for black-listed ballplayers. Weaver’s team, the Douglas Blues, was managed by the crooked Hal Chase and featured Chick Gandil at second base. Gandil soon jumped the team for another in the league but the following year Weaver became the Blues manager and was joined by Lefty Williams. Weaver coached the Blues to a losing record and wasn’t helped by Lefty’s desertion mid-season to join the rival Fort Bayard club. To cap it off, Buck also severely injured his ankle that season and didn’t return to the Copper League in 1927. The reasons went unreported, but there was talk of Chick Gandil pulling strings to keep Weaver away because of their disagreement over the 1919 fix. Weaver still told anyone who would listen that he was clean while the other seven were guilty, most recently that winter in Chicago when he and the other Black Sox were called to testify in court once again. Gandil must have been seething every time he had to face Weaver’s team and now he felt the self-righteous Buck had double-crossed him again.

Weaver was an extremely popular figure in the Windy City and his presence in uniform on a ball field was sure to attract a crowd. While the other Black Sox generated a mix of mostly negative reactions when they played after 1920, Buck seemed to always get a warm welcome and no place was more friendlier than the Chicago area. Spring of 1927 brought the much-heralded return of the Ginger Kid to the area’s sandlots when he signed on with the Hammond, Indiana Hammonds. As the Hammonds made the league circuit a few opposing teams threw a “Buck Weaver Day” in honor of the popular third baseman. The Hammonds played against other top-notch Chicago area semi-pro clubs like the Logan Squares and Duffy Florals as well as Negro league teams such as the Chicago American Giants.

Moving over to the rival Duffy Florals, Weaver finished out his playing days by switching over to shortstop and managing the Floral’s for the ‘28 and ‘29 season. At the age of 41 Buck fronted a team called “Buck Weaver’s Cooney’s” which was financially backed by one of Al Capone’s associates named Duke Cooney. The team played through the 1933 season and Buck wound down his playing days with another self-named semi-pro club, “Weaver’s West Side Colonels.”

While all the other Black Sox left Chicago for good after 1920, Weaver remained there for the rest of his life. He worked for the city of Chicago, installed elevators and eventually went into the drugstore business with his brother in-law. A fellow by the name of Charlie Walgreen approached Buck with an offer to combine their drugstores into a city-wide chain but Weaver declined. Walgreen’s became, well, WALGREENS, and Weaver’s store went under during the depression. The once fun-loving third baseman devolved into a bitter, disgruntled man, always decrying his punishment by Judge Landis and proclaiming his innocence in the 1919 fix. At the age of 65 the Ginger Kid suffered a heart attack and died alone on a Chicago sidewalk. His numerous letters to the commissioner’s office and the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown never once received a response and the one man who rightfully should have had the best chance at reinstatement was left overshadowed by all the publicity generated by Shoeless Joe Jackson’s deluded supporters.

110. Fred McMullin: The Forgotten Black Sox

To continue with my series on the 8 disgraced Chicago White Sox, I bring to you the mysterious Fred McMullin. Often overlooked and only given the briefest of mentions in books and articles dealing with the 1919 scandal, McMullin is unique in that unlike his teammates, his post-Black Sox baseball career was very brief. Material to piece together his later life was scant to say the least but I was able to gather enough to write-up a modest summation of what happened to this mediocre utility player...

Rarely used utility infielder McMullin is said to be a part of the fix because he accidentally overheard the plan. This is not true. Fred had a sound baseball knowledge and as such he was the Chicago’s advance scout and he may have gave the rest of his teammates a deliberately flawed report on the Cincinnati pitchers they were about to face. McMullin received $5,000 for his part in the fix, which was only 2 at-bats and no time in the field.

After being kicked out of organized baseball McMullin returned to Los Angeles where he had been a star ballplayer before his time in the majors. He was a well-liked fixture in the local baseball scene and many could not believe he had anything to do with any illegal doings back east. Through his brother-in-law he secured a job at Universal Film Studios and played on the company’s baseball team. The Los Angeles area was a hotbed of winter semi-pro leagues and many major and minor leaguers as well as Negro league stars came out west to play in the warm weather. McMullin was a popular player until the major leagues found out about his participation in games against “honest” ballplayers. After the Philadelphia Phillies fined their star outfielder Irish Meusel $100 for playing against McMullin, the disgraced ballplayer resigned from Universal’s team.

McMullin for his part didn’t seem to grasp the magnitude of what he and his buddies had done in 1919 and continued to try to visit former friends and teammates when they played in the Pacific Coast League. After being ignored and rebuffed time and time again, McMullin got the picture and while calling his treatment by organized baseball a “persecution,” he none-the-less steered clear of his former acquaintances. Unlike the other 7 Black Sox, McMullin did not attempt to play under an assumed name or hire himself out to semi-pro town teams as a ringer. The former White Sox simply and quietly resigned himself to a life outside of baseball and drifted through various careers - carpenter, salesman, office manager and then of all things - a Deputy Marshal of Los Angeles County.

For the rest of his life Fred McMullin never proclaimed his innocence nor applied for reinstatement and for that matter never made any statement what-so-ever about his role in the 1919 fix. He died in Southern California at the age of 61 in 1952.

109. Chick Gandil: After The Black Sox

For better or for worse, the story of the 1919 World Series and the 8 Chicago White Sox banished from the game has taken on a mythical quality in the last 90 some-odd years. Countless books have been written about every angle of the scandal, major movies feature the eight in all their glory and even a few misguided congressmen have wasted the taxpayer's time trying to somehow use the laws of the country to reinstate Shoeless Joe Jackson half a century after his death. For me, I never had any romantic misconceptions regarding the Black Sox. With the exception of Buck Weaver, those remaining seven were dirty ball players who sold their souls for cash. To me, banishment from the game was a just punishment.

But that's not what I want to write about. Authors much more talented than me have already covered the scandal. What I am more interested in is what happened to those eight after they were thrown out of the game in 1920. Earlier I featured stories on Happy Felsch and Eddie Cicotte's post Black Sox careers and to continue with that series I bring to you the infamous leader of the scandal, Chick Gandil...

Chick Gandil was the mastermind behind the fixing of the 1919 World Series. Described by his contemporaries as a “professional malcontent”, Chick was a thug of a ball player, even being suspended during the 1919 season for punching an umpire. He was a juvenile delinquent and after dropping out of high school he ran away from home, working his way south and west, all the while scratching out a living as an itinerant ball player and boxer. By 1907 the 20 year-old found himself in Cananea, Mexico working as a boilermaker in a copper mine and playing first base for the company team. Entering professional ball the following season, Gandil had 9 years of big league experience under his belt at the time of the fix.

He made the most money out of all the players, pocketing some $35,000, nine times his regular salary. After being turned down for a raise in 1920 he left the game and went west, spending most of his earnings. Later he and a few of the other Black Sox formed a touring team called "The Ex-Major League Stars" which disbanded after Gandil knocked out a few of Eddie Cicotte's teeth in an argument over money.

Since playing against any of the banned players would jeopardize a ball player's standing with organized baseball, Gandil and the other Black Sox had to look far and wide for a league that would let them play. The Copper League in Southern Arizona and New Mexico was one such haven.

Formed in the early 1920's, The Copper League was made up of rough and tumble mining towns and the play as well as the fans were as rowdy as could be expected from frontier wild west towns. The infamous Hal Chase, generally described as the greatest first baseman of all time, migrated to the league after his forced retirement from the majors. It was in his capacity as manager of the Douglas Blues in 1925 that he extended offers to all of the out of work Black Sox players. Lefty Williams, Buck Weaver and Chick Gandil accepted offers to play. Along side those three who were implicated in the 1919 world series fix was former New York Giant Jimmy O'Connell who was thrown out of baseball for trying to bribe members of the Philadelphia Phillies in 1924.

Gandil began his Copper League career as the second baseman of the Douglas Blues. A first baseman in the majors, Gandil moved over to second because Hal Chase was holding down the position in addition to his role as team manager. From the start Gandil brought his agitating and combative attitude to the team. Near the conclusion of the season he abruptly left the Blues and joined the Fort Bayard Veterans team. The following season he signed with the Veterans again and was joined by Jimmy O'Connell. The two black-listed ballplayers were constantly at odds with each other , apparently mostly instigated by the bully Gandil who rode O'Connell about the quality of his outfield work. By the end of June Gandil was forced to leave the team after O'Connell, fed up with the tough older man's bullying, chased the former boxer out of the Fort Bayard ballpark with a baseball bat.

Chick landed on his feet however and was quickly snapped up by the Chino Twins. Chino was actually an amalgamation of two towns, Santa Rita and Hurley, hence the name "Twins." Chino was the name of the mining concern that employed most of the people in the region, the Chino Copper Company.

Gandil soon became the Twins' manager as well as first baseman. When the season ended he stayed on in Chino working for the copper mine. It was also during the off-season that Chick traveled back to Chicago to give further testimony about fixing games during the 1917 season.

For 1927 the Twins were supposed to be featuring Buck Weaver and Happy Felsch but neither former Black Sox joined the team by the time the season began. Rumors circulated that Gandil had forced the popular Weaver out of the league because of his testimony which was counter to what he and Swede Risberg had said regarding the '17 season. What ever the reasons, the Twins had a terrible first half of the split-season, managing just 8 wins against 18 losses. Chick batted a lofty .481 and somehow was able to turn the ball club around in the second-half and finished up 21-10, gaining them a seat in the championship series against Fort Bayard.

But then just as the series was to begin, Chick disappeared. For unknown reasons he left not only the team but the whole region of the country. After giving up on the game Gandil began working as plumber and settled in the Napa Valley of California. He spent the rest of his life denying the White Sox threw the World Series saying that the team played their best to win.

Stay tuned because I will be featuring the remaining 5 Black Sox ball players and their post-pro ball careers. I would like to give credit where credit is due for some of the sources I will be using in this series. Besides first hand contemporary newspaper articles, the following 3 sources were indispensable:

After The Black Sox: The Swede Risberg Story by Alan Muchlinski. Simply excellent chunk of research that shines a light onto the later years of Swede and his former teammates who he played against.

Outlaw Baseball Players in the Copper League: 1925-1927 by Lynn Bevill. A M.A. thesis published online that is the best source I've found that really explains the role of the Black Sox in the Copper League but also does a great job at telling the story of the towns and how the league operated.

Blacksoxfan.com No list of sources would be complete without a big thanks to this site dedicated to the Black Sox. The authors downloadable pdf of every existing outlaw and semi-pro game featuring a member of the Black Sox is just a monumental achievement and unbelievably helpful in tracking the movements of the eight men.

65. Shoeless Joe Jackson: What's In A Name?

Yeah, I know, I already posted this story a while back, but wait - there's a reason... after much prodding and more than a basketful of emails, I finally got around to finishing my trilogy of Joe Jackson's minor league odyssey. So, if you think you can remember all you need to about my story on Jackson's first year in pro ball with the Greenville Spinners, just go one down to the next entry. An don't just stop there - this week is a double heaping of Southern Hospitality, Joe Jackson style as I posted the story of his 1910 New Orleans season as well. Enjoy!

One of 8 kids, Joe Jackson was born into extreme poverty. At the age of six Joe took his place alongside the rest of his family in one of the sprawling textile mills that dotted the rural South Carolina landscape at the turn of the century. Because of the need to contribute money to the family he never had time for proper schooling and much to his shame remained unable to read and write for the rest of his life. The one bright spot in Jackson's grim life of industrial-age toil was baseball. Showing great skill at an early age, by 13 Jackson was playing outfield for the Brandon Mills men's ballclub. South Carolina's textile leagues had an impressive amount of talent playing on the various mill teams and for Jackson to make a mark amidst all this talent was quite impressive.

He quickly became a local legend and during games his brothers would roam the stands passing a hat taking donations after Jackson made another impressive play of timely hit. Word soon spread of his talents and in 1907 the Brandon Mills team was playing an exhibition game against the Greenville Spinners of the Carolina Association. Their manager Tom Stouch was shocked and dismayed when a young player on the team seemed to get on base every damn time he got up to the plate. In the field he dazzled as well. By the end of the game Stouch knew the kid had what it took to play professionally and the next year Jackson inked his "X" to a contract for the staggering sum of $75.00 a month to play for the Spinners.

Although he was brimming with ability he was still raw around the edges. On a few occasions he was caught trying to steal bases already held by his own teammates, but he was the local boy and the fans of Greenville readily embraced him. He had done what most of them were unable to do - escape the drudgery of the textile mills. The 1908 team featured two other players destined to play in the big leagues, Ezra Midkiff and Scotty Barr and along with Jackson the Spinners quickly made it to the top of the 6-team league. Jackson played the outfield but was also brought in to pitch on occasion. He had a tremendous arm but retired as a pitcher after he broke the arm of an opposing batter and the rest of the league refused to hit against him. It didn't matter, he made his mark elseware. His speed and skill in the outfield led fans to dub his mitt "a place where triples go to die." He belted the ball at a .400 clip for most of the summer. Locals noted that the sound his bat connecting with the ball made had such a unique sound that they could tell it was Joe Jackson even if they were blindfolded.

It was during a Sunday double-header against the Anderson Electricians that Joe Jackson earned his nickname.

Finally earning a decent salary, Jackson treated himself to a well-deserved new pair of spikes. While playing in the first game of the double-header the unbroken-in shoes gave him blisters. By the end of the game he was in terrible pain and begged Stouch to let him sit out the second game. A Sunday double-header back then was the place to be for a small rural community and Jackson was the great attraction. Stouch couldn't let him sit out the game, everyone would not only be disappointed but there was always the potential for violence. People took their baseball seriously back then.

So with great pain, Joe Jackson made the fateful decision to remove his brand-new spikes and took the field in just his stocking feet. All went well for most of the game until the top of the seventh when he smacked a triple and slid stocking feet-first into third. An angry Anderson fan, seeing Jackson called safe at third base and noticing his stocking feet cried out "you shoeless son-of-a-gun, you!" A sportswriter overheard it and a timeless nickname was born.

Jackson hated it. Already sensitive about his inability to read or even sign his own name, he felt the nickname made him look even worse, bringing to life the image of a back-woods bare-foot illiterate. He spent the rest of his life trying to explain the circumstances around his moniker, telling the story over and over again that he never played ball bare-foot and it was but one game in his whole career that he took the field in his socks.

Shoes or no shoes, it was obvious to all that Jackson didn't belong in the minors for long. Manager Tom Stouch wrote to Connie Mack of the Philadelphia Athletics letting him know about the potential of two of his outfielders, Joe Jackson and Scotty Barr. Mack must have been impressed by the description Stouch wrote because in mid-August he dispatched one of his players on the disabled list to Greenville to take a look. "Socks" Seybold sat in the stands as the Spinners played the Charlotte Hornets and watched as Jackson belted a double, triple and home run. He noted that the kid also had a rifle for an arm. He quickly telegraphed Mack who in turn sent his assistant Sam Kennedy to verify Seybold's claims. Further assured by Kennedy, Mack signed Jackson who was batting .346 at the time and Barr, who was batting .299 as well as posting a 12-6 pitching record.

As soon as the Spinners season ended, Scotty Barr hopped on the first train to join the Athletics but Jackson hesitated. He'd never left the Carolina's and Philadelphia was as far away from Greenville as the moon. He was embarrassed by his illiteracy and because of it did not even know who the heck Connie Mack or the Philadelphia Athletics were. Manager Tom Stouch had spent a lifetime trying to get to the major leagues and even though he played in but 4 games he assumed it was every ballplayer's dream to get the call. With this in mind he decided to personally deliver Jackson to Connie Mack and at the end of August, 1908 Tom Stouch and "Shoeless Joe" Jackson boarded the overnight sleeper to Philadelphia.

Many of the photographs I used for reference were found on the valuable website called "The Shoeless Joe Jackson Virtual Hall Of Fame" at www.blackbetsy.com Not only is it a great resource on the life of Joe Jackson, but the staff are extremely helpful, a fellow named T.W. over there was extremely patient fielding my questions a few months ago when I was working on a Jackson angle for this site.
 

106. Joe Jackson: Southbound and Down

One of the most popular posts I've written was THIS ONE on Shoeless Joe Jackson and his first season of professional baseball with the Greenville Spinners. It was during that 1908 season that Jackson was saddled with the "Shoeless Joe" nickname he hated so much. This week I'd like to continue the saga of Shoeless Joe Jackson's early days...

We last left Joe Jackson in late August, 1908 as he and his Greenville manager Tom Stouch boarded the overnight sleeper to Philadelphia in order to join Connie Mack’s Athletics. Though Stouch’s prized protegee took some convincing to make the trip to Philly, the Greenville manager woke up the following morning sure Connie Mack would love this rookie. But there was only one problem: that prized rookie wasn’t on the train! Stouch searched high and low for Jackson but by the time the train stopped in Philadelphia a confused and empty-handed Stouch showed up at Shibe Park. Connie Mack handed the confused manager a telegram sent from Charlotte the previous night:

AM UNABLE TO COME TO PHILADELPHIA AT THIS TIME. JOE JACKSON.

It seems Jackson slipped off the train in the middle of the night as it stopped at Charlotte, North Carolina. Undaunted, Mack sent “Sock” Seybold back down to Greenville to fetch the kid and on August 25th he was in an A’s uniform in Shibe Park.

The local press made much of the unknown busher, comparing him to the great Ty Cobb and lavishing a generous heaping of praise on him before he even had his A’s cap on. In his first game he had an RBI single and made a few outstanding catches and throws in the outfield that sufficiently sated the press corps and the evening papers were full of enthusiasm for the young find.

The Tigers came to town next for a four game series and Philly fans couldn’t wait to see how their new boy measured up against Cobb. His new teammates also talked amongst themselves about this superstar in the making and when bad weather delayed the Detroit series by two full days, the downtime enabled the newspapers to whip-up the story of the wonderboy from Greenville into a media tsunami.

But when the skies cleared, Joe Jackson was nowhere to be found. He’d slipped away again, headed due south.

Jackson always maintained he was homesick, but his disgruntled teammates, left short-handed for 2 double-headers in 2 days against the powerhouse Tigers, let the press know they thought the kid a coward, unable to face his show down with the great Cobb. Jackson returned to the team again in early September but just as before, fled south once more before the season ended.

In retrospect, cowardice probably had little to do with Jackson’s desertion of the Athletics - embarrassment and bullying did. Since he couldn’t read nor write, Jackson was at the mercy of the other players who could and rather than let his illiteracy become known he tried to cover it up, the result of which only made it worse. There is one story that Connie Mack caught the busher sitting alone at breakfast with almost a dozen fried eggs on his plate. A shocked Mack asked the boy how he expected to play ball after such a feast and Jackson sheepishly explained to his manager what happened. He actually wanted two eggs for breakfast, but since he could not write a “2” he made 2 slash marks on his breakfast order card which the kitchen interpreted as an 11. It was incidents such as this, compounded on the resentment of his abandoning the team that led to teasing by the other A’s. It didn’t help any that the “Shoeless Joe” moniker followed him up to Philadelphia.

The Athletics held their 1909 training camp in Savannah, Georgia and Joe Jackson tore up the ball all spring. Although Mack was sure Jackson’s skills were up to the major league level, he wisely acknowledged that mentally the ballplayer was just not ready. So when the Athletics broke camp to head north, Jackson stayed behind, the newest member of the Class C Savannah Indians of the South Atlantic League, affectionately called the “Sally League”.

More comfortable playing in the south, Joe smashed the ball at a .450 clip in the beginning of the season and started to be called the “Ty Cobb of the Sally League.” Here in Savannah, the sportswriters were less ruthless than back in Philly and the crowds didn’t heckle him - here back down south Jackson was amongst his own people. The Indians had a mediocre team in 1909 and would finish the season with a losing record. Jackson for his part played splendidly, leading the league with a .358 average, 19 doubles, 12 triples and couple of home runs. He swiped 32 bases and his arm and fielding skills impressed even the most jaded observer. The sportswriters spent columns and columns of space praising the young star and he was named the center fielder of the Sally League All-Star team. One paper wrote of him: “Jackson is a sensation in all departments of the great American game, and that’s saying a whole lot.” It was obvious a player of Jackson’s talent had no business playing around in the Sally League - this boy was a big leaguer.

But the sure-bet big leaguer also seemed to have a problem with authority and a propensity towards strange, immature acts. Sometimes he didn’t show for batting practice or miss games completely. His manager in the first half of the season was Bobby Gilks who seemed to know how to handle the budding star. Under Gilks, Jackson was given a long leash and as long as he produced on the field he was left alone. But with the Indians stuck in the lower half of the standings, Gilks was fired and the new manager, Earnest Howard, didn’t understand how to harness the young Jackson. Hurt by the loss of Gilks, Jackson moped around the clubhouse and sulked openly.In one bizarre instance, he and a teammate left the game in the middle of an inning and took seats in the stands, sharing a bag of peanuts. The Savannah management fined the hell out of him for that stunt, but it didn’t seem to put a stop to his immaturity.

At the end of the season Mack brought Jackson north again to ease him into the Athletics clubhouse. The A’s were in a pennant race with the Tigers and Mack used the uneasy busher very sparingly. He didn’t play well at all and managed an anemic .176 in a handful of games. The teasing was relentless as well.

It was supposedly during this period that one of the most famous Jackson stories took place - while standing on third base a fan called out “hey Joe - can you spell cat?” to which Jackson spat back: ”Hey mister - can you spell shit?”

The kindly Connie Mack was sympathetic to Jackson’s plight and offered to pay for a tutor to teach him how to read and write, but the ballplayer refused. But even the saintly Mack had his limits and Jackson was approaching the breaking point. His behavior became more and more erratic, sometimes showing up late to the park, then skipping practice and sometimes whole games. Then Mack found out his new outfielder went to a burlesque show instead of a game and that was the end of Jackson’s stay in Philly.

107. Joe Jackson: The Big Easy

This is the third and last post on the minor league career of Shoeless Joe Jackson. If you missed the previous entries, HERE is the first on his season with Greenville and HERE is the story of his 1909 season in Savannah.

After a second attempt to bring Joe Jackson up to the Philadelphia Athletics, Connie Mack resigned himself to the fact that the sure-hit superstar in the making was just not mentally able to cope with life in the big leagues. At the same time, he couldn’t simply trade the kid to another big league team because of the chance that it could come back to haunt the A’s one day. The only logical option was to lend him to another minor league club down south and hope that another year marinating in the minors would be the right prescription to make Jackson ready for the big time.

Jackson reported to the training camp of the New Orleans Pelicans in March, 1910. Arriving there he found his old Greenville teammate Scotty Barr, who had been called up at the same time to the A’s and had just been released by Mack.

The Pelicans played in the Class A Southern association and had a working agreement with Cleveland (at this time called the “Naps”). Joe’s manager from Savannah, Bobby Gilks, was now a scout for Cleveland and the two were reunited again down in New Orleans.

Realizing that he was probably never going to play for Connie Mack again, Jackson set himself to becoming a mature ballplayer. Besides disciplining himself to show up for practice and to work as a member of a team, Jackson also developed a make-shift training routine to strengthen his body. Holding the heaviest bat he could find, Jackson would hold it out at arm’s length and keep it raised for as long as he could keep a hold on it. Then he would do the same with the other arm. To sharpen his eyesight he came up with the strange regimen of closing one eye and staring at a lit candle until the flame became out of focus and then he would repeat with the other eye. How this was not harmful I have no idea, but Jackson swore that it strengthened his eyesight and helped him keep a pitched ball in clear focus.

As in Savannah, the local press was much kinder to Jackson and the fans less caustic in their comments. Coupled with his new-found maturity, Jackson commenced to eating up the Southern Association pitching. Once again he led his league in batting with a .354 average and his skillful base running helped him steal 40 bases. The Pelicans were a much better team than Savannah and they won the pennant that year and once again Jackson was selected for the league all-star team. The New Orleans Picayune called Jackson a “star of the first magnitude” and no one argued differently. After another brilliant year down south, there was no way around it - Joe Jackson was bound for the big leagues.

Since Jackson’s former Savannah manager Bobby Gilks was now a Cleveland scout, it was probably him who put the bug in the ear of the big club to sign this kid right now. Connie Mack, who still owned the rights to Jackson, consented to a trade. After a confusing round of side-trades and money exchanging hands, Jackson became property of Cleveland. Finally mentally and physically up for the challenge, Joe Jackson was big league bound for good.

47. "Happy" Felsch: Life After The Black Sox

As a White Sox fan (and I mean a REAL ONE, not a politically-motivated one like the president who, when pressed, could not name a single friggin' player on the team he supposedly was a die-hard fan of), I don't glamorize the infamous 1919 team. They were what they were, damn good ballplayers who succumbed to temptation and betrayed the game they loved and violated the simple understood trust between players and fans that when they pay to see a game, each team tries their best to win. In my view, betraying this basic pillar of sportsmanship is a forfeiture of the right to continue playing that game. I don't care that Joe Jackson was underpaid. I don't give a damn Eddie Cicotte was cheated out of his 1919 bonus money. It is not an excuse that Chick Gandil felt he deserved more money from the White Sox. What those 7 men (I leave Weaver out of this as he was probably clean) did was wrong. Plain and simple. All that said, I was always fascinated by what happened to those players post-1920. Where did they go, what did they do? Did baseball still play a part in their lives? The answer as we have seen in my Eddie Cicotte post a few months ago is yes. Each player, in their own way kept baseball in their lives even though they had to do it secretly or in an un-organized way. This post is about the White Sox's centerfielder, "Happy" Felsch.

Oscar Felsh was born and raised in Milwaukee and he earned his nickname honestly, he really was a happy-go-lucky fella. "Hap" was the quintessential American success story. The son of German immigrants, he rose from his humble origins and with the support of his baseball-playing father, Charles, Oscar soon attracted the attention of scouts and after playing on a succession of semi-pro teams he was signed by the hometown Milwaukee Brewers. Quick with a smile and joke, popular with his teammates, Felsch was also blossoming into a superior outfielder. It was only a matter of time before he caught the attention of the majors and after a bidding war between Cincinnati, Washington, New York and both Chicago teams he was sold to the White Sox for the 1915 season. It is at this point in his career that sympathetic fans try to make a point for Felsch being just a victim of circumstances that eventually lead to the Black Sox scandal of 1919. Felsch had but a sixth grade education and as such it has been argued that he was at the mercy of smarter, more cunning team owners when it came to contract negotiations. That may be true but thousands of other players came from comparable or even more disadvantaged backgrounds and did not succumb to the temptation to throw a game for money.

After a pretty good rookie season marred by leg injuries, Felsch developed into a first-class centerfielder, recognized as among the best in the American League. In the White Sox's magnificent 1917 season Felsch really came into his own batting .308, being first among outfielders in put-outs, second in RBI's and fourth in home runs. The Sox went on to win the series that year and many rank that team among the best in history. It was also during this season that Happy came upon a hunch-back kid in New York hanging around the Polo Grounds and adopted him as the White Sox mascot that year. That hunch-back was Eddie Bennett who later went on to be batboy for Brooklyn in 1920 and then the Yankees from 1921-32.

The White Sox of this period was a club divided by class-consciousness. One part of the club was dominated by Eddie Collins, a college educated ballplayer who knew what he was worth and how to extract it from the crafty club owners. The other half of the team was run by Swede Risberg and Chick Gandil, uneducated, street-smart ballplayers who were close with the shady gamblers who were an all-too frequent part of the sporting scene back then. Felsch, with his limited education and zest for fun naturally found himself with the later group.

The full story Black Sox scandal is a tale that need no elaboration in this entry, but suffice it to say it was partly Felsch's uncharacteristically shoddy fielding that gave the first inclination that something was just not right with the series. The collaborators stories quickly fell apart and after the 1920 season Joe Jackson, Chick Gandil, Swede Risberg, Buck Weaver, Lefty Williams, Eddie Cicotte, Fred McMullin and Happy Felsch were banished from organised baseball. All the 8 players with the exception of Williams and Felsch were probably past their prime. Fesch was just reaching his peak as a ballplayer and with that, he was out of a livelihood.

Fortunately for the 8 men, baseball was the most popular sport in the land and every small town and decent sized company had a team of their own. It was a matter of pride to have a good team and some towns and companies stopped at nothing to field an unbeatable team. Former players who found themselves out of the big leagues but still a few more years of game left in them found employment with such teams looking for an edge over the competition. In addition to the town and company ballclubs, hundreds of travelling teams crossed the county playing against anyone who would take up the challenge and provide a decent day of ticket sales. It was in this atmosphere that the former White Sox players formed a team of their own called the "Ex-Major League Stars". The short, bitter history of this team was covered in my entry on Eddie Cicotte (http://infinitecardset.blogspot.com/2010/05/29-eddie-cicotte.html)

After the breakup of the team, the Sox went their separate ways. Felsch went back to Milwaukee where he remained a hometown favorite. He opened up a grocery store and engaged in numerous legal battles related to the fix of the world series and his attempts to get back pay from the Sox after being banned from baseball. Felsch was batted around mercilessly by smarter attorneys and he returned home to Milwaukee time after time defeated and humiliated. Now married with 2 children and realising his career as a major leaguer was over, Felsch migrated west and found a home with the Scobey, Montana baseball team. Swede Risberg was already a star player on the Scobey team and was the obvious reason Felsch found a home there. This was a low point of Felsch's life and in this rough and tumble world of outlaw baseball played out west, Felsch and Risberg made a reputation for themselves as two tough customers who should never be crossed when drinking, a tall compliment in the still wild west of 1925 Montana. The two banned players earned a nice $600 a month plus expenses and attracted huge crowds eager to see how real professional ballplayers played the game. Hap entertained the crowds by smacking tremendous homeruns all the while enduring taunts by opposing players and fans about being a crook. Arguments were often settled after the game with fists instead of words. He spent the following season in Montana and then turned north to Regina, Saskatchewan where he played on and managed the Balmorals. The following seasons were spent with a succession of lower quality semi-pro teams culminating in the 1930 season playing with the travelling American-Canadian Clown Team. The 39 year-old Felsch was at the end of his career as a ballplayer.

Returning home to Milwaukee as he always seemed to do, Felsch began a long career as a saloon keeper on the Northside where each bar he operated became a hangout for the local sandlot and semipro players who came to partake of Hap's jovial company. Not many brought themselves to ask the friendly barkeep of the famous scandal and he never brought it up. After his saloon owning days ended, Felsch became a crane operator and died at age 73, still an avid fan of the game he and his teammates betrayed.