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negro leagues DB update: 1928 NNL & ECL

The 1928 Negro National League champion St. Louis Stars.

Today we add the 1928 Negro leagues to the DB.  This was the year the Eastern Colored League fell apart, putting an end to the first edition of the Black World Series.  Meanwhile the Negro National League continued with a split-season format.  The St. Louis Stars won the first half going away; in the second half, the American Giants just edged the Stars and the Kansas City Monarchs, setting up an NNL championship series with St. Louis that would take the place of the World Series that year.

The problems that doomed the ECL in 1928 had roots going back several years, involving arguments about schedules, players, parks, umpires, and money.  The first real warning signs cropped up in 1927, when the New York Lincoln Giants were kicked out of the ECL for signing the outfielder Estéban Montalvo away from the western Cuban Stars, thus violating the peace deal that had been in effect between the two leagues since 1924.  The Lincolns were readmitted in spring 1928, in exchange for giving Montalvo back to the Cuban Stars.  But then Harrisburg Giants owner Colonel Strothers decided he could no longer afford to bankroll his club, a perennial contender, and folded the team (though the Giants would return midway through 1928 with a less-distinguished roster).  Soon after that Nat Strong's Brooklyn Royal Giants resigned from the league, and the next day Ed Bolden pulled his Hilldale Club, perhaps the ECL's flagship franchise, out of the circuit.  Even with the Lincolns back in the fold, the ECL was still reduced to four clubs.

A Philadelphia gangster named Smittie Lucas had put together a team he called the Eastern League Stars, an all-star team originally intended only for spring play.  Desperate for more teams, especially one based in Philadelphia, the league admitted Lucas's club---though he had to return most of his stars to their original teams, and the name of his outfit was eventually changed to the Philadelphia Tigers.  Another new club, the Brooklyn Stars, failed to materialize.  So the Eastern Colored League started the 1928 season with five teams.

Harmony didn't last long.  When the Harrisburg Giants left the league, their players were divvied up among the other clubs, and outfielders Rap Dixon and Fats Jenkins were awarded to Baltimore.  While Dixon signed with the Black Sox, Jenkins refused, and started appearing for the Lincoln Giants under the pseudonym "Williams."  Other disagreements ensued involving the scheduling of games with independent clubs, particularly Hilldale, and by late May the Lincolns and Cuban Stars had left the league.  Plans to replace them with Syd Pollock's Havana Red Sox and other teams came to nothing, and the Eastern Colored League was finally through.

It's not certain when exactly the league came to end, and no "final" standings were ever published.  If games through May 20 are counted, then the Baltimore Black Sox ended with the best record at 9-3, with five of their wins coming against the Philadelphia Tigers.  The teams continued to play each other (with the exception of the Black Sox and Lincoln Giants, where lingering bad feeling about the Jenkins incident kept them apart through the whole season).  We've chosen to present the standings for all games played between the ECL clubs throughout the 1928 season.  By this measure the Bacharach Giants, champions in 1926 and 1927, took the virtual 1928 ECL pennant as well, with an 18-12 record.

The Bacharachs were helped to this record by none other than Fats Jenkins (.365/.425/.464), whom they immediately stole from the Lincoln Giants when the league dissolved.  Chaney White (.371/.424/.517), player-manager Dick Lundy (.338/.401/.498), and Rats Henderson (8-2, 3.42) also contributed, as did double threat Luther Farrell (.395/.489/.618, 9-7 as a pitcher).  The Baltimore Black Sox enjoyed great seasons from Rap Dixon (.398/.478/.701), Jud Wilson (.399/.492/.652), and Laymon Yokely (12-6, 2.77).  The 44-year-old John Henry Lloyd hit .383 against top black clubs for his Lincoln Giants, while his double play partner, George Scales, hit .328/.416/.605 (which doesn't include a 6 for 6, two home run performance against Hilldale, since a box score hasn't been found yet).  Alex Pompez's Cuban Stars struggled without renaissance man Martín Dihigo, though former Boston Red Sox infielder Ramón Herrera contributed a .331 average, new captain José María Fernández (replacing Pelayo Chacón after 12 years) hit .333, and infielder Angel Alfonso scorched the ball for a .489 average and .872 slugging percentage in 12 games against top black competition.

The Hilldale Club, the team whose abandonment of the ECL probably doomed it, may have been the best club on the east coast in 1928.  Bolden scooped up Oscar Charleston (.346/.449/.605), Walter Cannady (.325/.389/.490), and Darltie Cooper (10-5, 2.39) from the defunct Harrisburg Giants, and used them to revitalize a cast that already included Biz Mackey (.342/.410/.533).  The Homestead Grays grabbed John Beckwith (.306) from Harrisburg, and had already signed Martín Dihigo (.313, 4 homers) away from Pompez in 1927.  The Grays also pirated a couple of NNL stars, enticing lefty Sam Streeter (4-2) to leave the Birmingham Black Barons and Jelly Gardner to abandon the American Giants.  Making the most of a limited opportunity, a 33-year-old West Virginia coal miner named Grover Lewis blasted three home runs for the Grays in a game against Hilldale before disappearing back to Appalachian semipro ball.  (If you haven't already seen it, check out Scott Simkus's great piece about Lewis in a back issue of the Seamheads Outsider Baseball Bulletin.)

Over in the Negro National League, Candy Jim Taylor had been quietly incubating a powerful Stars lineup over the past few seasons; this was the year his patience would bear fruit, as the Stars dominated from the start.  Mule Suttles (.365, 21 home runs), Willie Wells (.357, 21), and Wilson Redus (.352, 22) took full advantage of the 250-foot left field fence at Stars Park, caused by the intrusion of a trolley car barn into the outfield.  Given all those runs to play with, right-handed curveballer Ted Trent pitched well enough (2.36 ERA, 121 strikeouts in214 innings) to go 19-3.  Slap Hensley, Luther McDonald, and Johnny Williams added solid mound work, while Roosevelt Davis became the closest thing to a relief ace the Negro leagues had so far seen, going 8-0 while relieving in twice as many games as he started (15 to 8).

The American Giants relied on the arms of Willie Foster (13-8, 2.82) and Willie Powell (9-6, 2.00) and the bats of Steel Arm Davis (.319/.364/.442) and shortstop Pythias Russ (.339/.372/.431), a converted catcher whose career was cut short when he died of tuberculosis in 1930 at the age of only 26.  The Monarchs lacked the slugging they had become known for in the early 1920s, when they could boast the likes of Dobie Moore and Heavy Johnson in their lineup.  They were now a team that relied on speed, pitching, and glovework.  Andy Cooper (12-7, 3.38) led the pitchers, while catcher Frank Duncan, shortstop Newt Allen, and center fielder Eddie Dwight (whose speed drew comparisons with Cool Papa Bell) anchored a solid defense.  Bullet Rogan, now 34, hit .348/.405/.512, went 10-2 as a pitcher, and even filled in at second base---in addition to managing the team. (He also clouted 3 home runs in a 16-2 route of the Detroit Stars played in Clinton, Missouri, but a box score hasn't been found yet.) This formula worked well enough to give the Monarchs the second-best overall record, although they agonizingly fell short of winning either half.

Utility man Wilson "Stack" Martin got the Detroit Stars' season off to a great start when he hit 6 for 6 on opening day.  Turkey Stearnes popped a league-leading 24 homers, Big George Mitchell went 13-8, Ed Rile, a 6'7" converted pitcher, hit .348/.425/.508, and veteran second baseman Claude Johnson drew a league-leading 40 walks---but these Stars couldn't keep up with the other Stars, finishing in third place overall.  Meanwhile, in a breakout sophomore season the Birmingham Black Barons' Leroy "Satchel" Paige (11-4, 2.32, a league-leading 121 strikeouts in 132 innings) served notice of what was to come.  He couldn't quite lift the Black Barons to a .500 record; while a couple of other pitchers were decent, the hitting was abject, with only Roy Parnell (.316/.365/.503) able to contribute much.

Player-manager Carl Glass (12-10, 2.96) and catcher Larry Brown (.265, sterling defense) were still the mainstays of the otherwise woeful Memphis Red Sox. Of Cleveland's fifth attempt at an NNL team, the Tigers, the less said the better, though it's worth noting the nearly heroic performance of Edward "Babe" Milton, who played eight positions while hitting .354 with 13 triples for an otherwise terrible team.

Tinti Molina's Cuban Stars suffered through one of their worst seasons ever, finishing dead last with a team that managed only two home runs in 47 games.  Most mysteriously, Estéban Montalvo, the slugger who was so good the Lincoln Giants had quit the ECL rather than give him up in 1927, and who had once hit three home runs in a single ECL game all by himself, couldn't hit the side of a barn in 1928, managing only a .136/.219/.189 line.  It's hard not to think that he was perhaps not properly motivated to play for Molina, the manager he'd tried to escape the year before---although in retrospect, he may also have been suffering the early effects of the illness that would finally kill him in 1930.

The league championship was a classic, as recounted by Kevin Johnson.  The teams split four games in Chicago; before the series moved to St. Louis, Chicago's number two starter, Willie Powell, was shot in the face by his father-in-law during a domestic altercation.  He would survive and continue his pitching career, but he was out of this series.  In St. Louis the Stars shortstop Willie Wells took over, blasting six home runs in the last five games (our stats cover only three of them, as two box scores are missing), and the Stars prevailed 5 games to 4.

Crossposted at Seamheads.com.

oscar rogan

Several years ago Todd Peterson sent me this box score, from the May 7, 1917, Fort Wayne (Indiana) Daily News, which showed a pitcher named Rogan and outfielders named Carr and Hawkins playing for the Fort Wayne Colored Giants.

(Ft. Wayne Daily News, May 7, 1917, p. 3)

At first glance it seemed like a real possibility these players were Bullet Rogan, Lemuel Hawkins, and George Carr.  They had all played for the Los Angeles White Sox in the late 1910s and would join the Kansas City Monarchs in 1920, and Rogan and Hawkins had played for the 25th Infantry Wreckers.  And Rogan was on furlough from the Army during the first half of 1917, during which he played for the All-Nations club and Kansas City Giants.  It seemed too much for a coincidence, yet it was odd all the same: what were these guys doing playing for a little-known, surely semiprofessional club in Indiana?  I’d never known Carr to play anywhere but on the west coast until 1920.  And why were they getting pounded by a seemingly undistinguished white semipro club?

First, I checked out the Ft. Wayne papers for the whole year of 1917, and found quite a bit of coverage of the Colored Giants, including various short reports on the team as it was being assembled in April, along with box scores for other games.  This Rogan, it turned out, was reported to be a southpaw from the Louisville White Sox (Bullet Rogan, of course, was righthanded); Carr was an “ex-Lima  [Ohio] Giant,” called “little Carr, the bow-legged center fielder” (Ft. Wayne Sentinel, June 4), which isn’t a very good description of George Carr; and Hawkins was supposed to be a “local star.”  If Dupee and Wilson, the Colored Giants’ owners, had hired a trio from the west coast they certainly would have publicized that fact, rather than saying they were from Louisville, Lima, and Ft. Wayne.

Carr could be John W. Carr, who played for the Dayton Marcos in the late 1910s, though I can’t say for sure.  Hawkins of Ft. Wayne I don’t know, though there were a couple of African American men named Hawkins who registered for the draft in Ft. Wayne in June, 1917.  As for Rogan: only two black men named Rogan registered for the draft in Indiana, and one of them resided in Ft. Wayne: Oscar Rogan, born March 27, 1891, in Gallatin, Sumner County, Tennessee.

Here’s Oscar Rogan’s WW2 draft card as well, which is a bit easier to read:

The Sumner County, Tennessee, birthplace really jumped out at me, because that’s precisely where Bullet Rogan’s family was from before they moved to Oklahoma in 1890.  Could the two pitchers have been related?

Here’s Oscar and two brothers, Edward and John, living with their widowed father Henry Rogan in Sumner County in 1900:

And here’s the young Charles Wilber “Bullet” Rogan, living with his father and a boarder in Oklahoma City in the 1900 U.S. Census:

We can find Richard Rogan, Bullet’s father, with the rest of his family, living in Oklahoma City, in the Oklahoma territorial census in 1890 (before Wilber Rogan was born):

The same family can be found back in Sumner County, Tennessee, in the 1880 census, with one interesting addition: a brother named Henry (the name of Oscar Rogan’s father), who wasn’t in Oklahoma with the rest of the family in 1890.  The ages are a little different, though; according to the 1900 census Henry, Oscar’s father, was born in 1852, which would make him 28 in 1880, while this Henry is only 22.

But then, when we follow the family of John Rogan, Bullet Rogan’s grandfather, back to the 1870 census, in the midst of Reconstruction, Henry is gone again:

To recap, here’s the Rogan family from 1870 to 1890, with their reported ages in the three census records, 1870 U.S., 1880 U.S., 1890 Oklahoma:

                       1870        1880        1890
John Rogan (father)      46         56         70
Sarah Rogan (mother)     33         44
Thomas                   13         24
Charles H.               13                    30
Henry                    22
Richard                   8         19         27
Laura                     3
Martha                    9 months  10         20
Frank                     8         18
John                      4         16
Sarah                               14
Maria                               10

It seems likely that Charles H. Rogan and Henry Rogan were really the same person, Charles Henry Rogan, and that he moved with his father and most of his siblings to Oklahoma Territory in 1890 or before.  By 1890, Charles had a wife, Melissa, and two children of his own, Walter and Mary.  It’s a little confusing, but subsequent census records seem to show that Charles Henry Rogan and his family continued in Oklahoma to 1900 and after (and he alternated between his first and middle names), and he would therefore not be the Henry who was Oscar Rogan’s father.

There was another black man named Henry Rogan in Sumner County, though.  He was born in Sumner County in 1858, apparently lived there his whole life, and died on April 6, 1925.  He first shows up in the 1880 census.  He was aged 18, rather than 28 as Oscar’s father would have been (based on the 1900 census), and he was living with an aunt, Idia Harris, who was still living next door to the family in 1900 (see above):

Then, if we go back to 1870, we can find him, living with his parents, Wesley and Patsy Rogan, in Sumner County:

So was Wesley Rogan, Oscar’s grandfather, related to John Rogan, Bullet’s grandfather?  The 1870 census shows 49 African Americans named Rogan in Sumner County (along with 10 whites).  Unfortunately, this is the point where slavery draws a curtain across black history, and it can becomes very, very difficult to trace individuals, at least in most easily accessible records.  In 1860 and before, the census recorded the numbers of slaves (this was necessary because of the Constitution’s three-fifths clause), but did not give their names.

 This post is already more than long enough, so I’ll pick up the story tomorrow.

dobie moore update

Here’s a copy of the actual death certificate for Walter Moore, whose death record was found by Peter Morris, and who might be the Kansas City Monarchs shortstop Dobie Moore:

The informant, “Mildred Toles,” seems likely to be Walter’s sister, Mildred, who married James Tate.  In the 1940 census, the Tates, Walter Moore, and another sister, Anna King, lived at 1022 Alfred, the same address Walter gave on his WW2 draft card and that’s on his death certificate.

Most intriguing, though, is the information that Walter Moore had been “in this community” for 21 years.  That puts his arrival in Detroit in 1926—the very year in which Dobie Moore was shot and his Negro league career ended.

In addition, Mark Aubrey has pointed out that Walter’s younger brother Allen is listed as a “Baseball Player” in the 1930 census:

Dobie Moore’s younger brother, Pete Moore, was a Detroit ballplayer, as late as 1941:

(Chicago Defender, May 31, 1941, p. 22)

There was also a Pete Moore playing for a team called the Black Mohawks of Bradford, Pa., in the late 1920s.  Was this also Pete’s brother, and were Allen Moore and Pete Moore the same person?

If the Walter Moore we’re looking at was not Dobie Moore, it seems like quite a string of coincidences: 1) same name; 2) both were from Atlanta, and were the same age; 3) both were in Detroit in the 1930s and 1940s; 4) both had a younger brother who was also a ballplayer (I haven’t compiled the date, but there were not that many black men who listed their occupation as ballplayer in the 1930 census); 5) our Walter Moore arrived in Detroit in 1926, the same year in which Dobie Moore was forced to quit the Monarchs.

And if this Walter Moore isn’t Dobie, where’s Dobie?  I haven’t found a trace of anyone else who could be him.

However: this Walter Moore died in Detroit on August 20, 1947.  As I have noted, Dobie Moore was supposed to have been one of the pallbearers at George Carr’s funeral in Los Angeles in January, 1948.  Not only that, but I found another sighting of Dobie Moore later that year, in Chicago:

(Chicago Defender, June 19, 1948, p. 10)

These 1948 sightings of Dobie Moore could be mistakes.  And the circumstantial evidence linking this Walter Moore to the Monarch shortstop is pretty convincing.  But it would be great to get one solid link between this Walter and the ballplayer—something like a reference to Dobie’s younger brother Allen (rather than Pete), or anything giving the name of any of Dobie’s relatives, or a record or document that establishes Walter Moore of Detroit as a ballplayer himself.

negro leagues on film

 

Hollywood hopefuls: Bruce Petway, Jack Johnson, Sam Crawford

 

Archivists at the University of Georgia have uncovered what seems to be the earliest known footage of African Americans playing baseball, dating from 1917.  It’s not professional or even semi-professional, but rather a game between two plantation teams in rural Georgia.

There are at least a couple of examples of actual Negro league teams being filmed around this time.  As I wrote a couple of years ago, on opening day at Giants Park in St. Louis in 1919, there were plans to film a game between the St. Louis Giants and the Mexico (Mo.) Grays, a white semipro team.  Although the game was rained out, it was played the next day (May 12, 1919).  If this film was shot, it hasn’t surfaced anywhere, so far as I can tell.

But even more intriguing than the Georgia film or the possible St. Louis Giants footage is another film project that came to fruition in 1921.

In April of that year, the news emerged that former world heavyweight champion Jack Johnson had agreed to make a movie for the Kansas City-based Andlauer Film Company:

(Kansas City Star, April 3, 1921, p. 20)

Although the Andlauer Company is often said to have been black-owned, that seems not to have been the case.  Founded by William Anthony “Billy” Andlauer, a (white) movie theater manager, photographer, and filmmaker, the company would become best-known for industrial, technical, and educational films of mostly local interest.  The Jack Johnson project may well have been the studio’s only foray into black-cast films for black audiences, at least as far as I’ve seen.  It was originally called The Heart of Jack Johnson, but was later retitled As the World Rolls On.

The New York Times article above refers to the film, saying that it contained “footage of an all-black Kansas team in the background.”  In fact, As the World Rolls On featured footage of actual NNL games involving the Kansas City Monarchs, Detroit Stars, and Chicago American Giants.  The games are integrated into the plot, and Negro league players, notably Sam Crawford, Bruce Petway, and Cristóbal Torriente, had roles in the film.

As the World Rolls On was extremely ambitious, especially for a race film at the time.  A detailed plot summary appeared in the Chicago Defender (August 20, 1921, p. 7).  An “industrious youth” named Joe Walker, who is “subject to sudden heart attacks,” vies for the hand of Molly, loyal assistant to the respected physician Dr. Saunders.  His romantic rival is the vicious bully Tom Atkins, who leads a gang of hooligans and enjoys beating up on the “weaker, smaller” Joe.  During one such beatdown, the former heavyweight champ Jack Johnson just happens to be nearby, taking his two nieces for a walk and lecturing them on frontier history in front of the Cyrus E. Dallin statue The Scout, in Kansas City’s Penn Valley Park.

Johnson, hearing the disturbance, rushes to help Joe.  He easily dispatches the assailants—being Jack Johnson and all—and leaves them “all stretched out motionless on the ground, due to the whipping Johnson has given them.”  There follows a Karate Kid sequence in which Johnson takes on Joe Walker as his protégé and sparring partner.  He gets Joe to quit smoking and teaches him “physical and breathing exercises.”  In the course of all this the ex-champ “displays his powerful superhuman strength and scientific boxing ability.”  Joe, meanwhile, “becomes a healthy man and an athlete.”

And now baseball enters the picture:

“About this time the National Colored League baseball games are in progress at the ball park.  In a game between the Kansas City Monarchs and the Detroit Stars (actual scenes) Sam Crawford, captain of the Monarchs, sprains his arm and finds himself in a tight place owing to illness and injuries to his pitching staff.  He does not know how the game can be completed without a pitcher.  Accidentally glancing in one of the boxes, to his pleasant surprise he sees Joe with Molly.  Knowing Joe’s ability as an amateur pitcher, he appeals to Joe to finish the game.  Joe agrees, puts on a uniform, pitches a wonderful game and knocks a home run in the ninth inning which wins the game.

“The Elks’ lodge of which Joe is a member is so enthusiastic over Joe’s triumph that the members invite him as the honored guest to a reception given the following Sunday at the ball park.  The Chicago Giants are the Monarchs’ opponents (actual scenes).  During this reception Nelson Crews, editor of the leading Colored publication, presents the Monarch players with silver monogramed [sic] buckles and belts on behalf of the Elks.”

Nelson Crews was the editor of the Kansas City Sun; it’s actually Rube Foster’s American Giants, not Joe Green’s Chicago Giants, who appear in the film.  The plot continues with romance, conspiracy, a trial scene, gunfire, and more fighting before Joe finally vanquishes Tom and marries Molly.  Jack Johnson provides his blessing and a thousand-dollar check for the newlyweds.

A piece in the Baltimore Afro-American (December 9, 1921, p. 5) provides a little more information about the film’s baseball content:

“This picture was made by W. A. Andlauer in Kansas City early in September of this year.  Besides an all-star cast of colored actors, Johnson is supported by the famous Negro big league teams with Rube Foster and his Chicago Giants, Sam Crawford and his Kansas City Monarchs, and the Detroit Stars.”

Along with Jack Johnson,  Blanche Thompson (Molly), and Reed Thomas (Joe Walker), cast listings also include Sam Crawford, Bruce Petway, Rube Foster, and “Torrientti”—Cristóbal Torriente, touted as “the Black Babe Ruth” in one ad for the movie—all playing themselves.

We can narrow down the possibilities for which games feature in the film.  It so happens that both the Detroit Stars and the Chicago American Giants visited Kansas City only once in 1921.  The Stars played a five-game series there, starting on July 23.  The Monarchs swept the series, with Sam Crawford securing complete-game victories in the first game (a 5 to 1 win on July 23) and the last (5 to 2 on July 26).  Since the plot involves Crawford pitching, it seems like a good bet that footage was shot in one or both of those games.

The American Giants played six games in Kansas City from September 3 through September 8, taking four of them.

According to sources at the UCLA Special Collections Library, “following the film’s early showings, Andlauer added 500 feet of baseball footage and ‘made one reel all baseball and parades taking all of the shots pertaining to players and parades out of the story’ to make a one-reel supplement.  Andlauer wrote, ‘This makes the action better and we know improves the film’.”

(New York Age, September 10, 1921)

As the World Rolls On was released on September 10, 1921, and played all over the country, including New York, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Richmond, Baltimore, Louisville, Dallas, and Philadelphia, well into 1922.  Oddly enough, it was apparently never shown in Chicago, despite the appearance of Rube Foster and the American Giants.

Today, as far as I’m aware, there are no extant prints of As the World Rolls On, which is an enormous shame.  From a baseball perspective, this was an astonishing document of Negro league history, a real treasure.  What wouldn’t you give to see actual footage of these teams—not mention watch Sam Crawford, Rube Foster, or Bruce Petway act in a movie?

I was able to find one final clue that might be useful to anyone trying to track down a copy of the film.  In November 1923, Andlauer Film Productions placed an ad in the Chicago Defender trying to sell three prints of the film, along with title cards and other materials (it was a silent film, of course), for $850.

(Chicago Defender, November 24, 1923, p. 6)

UPDATE 3:26 pm  I created a separate page with the entire plot summary of As the World Rolls On from the Chicago Defender (August 20, 1921, p. 7).

the death of dobie moore?

Peter Morris, author of Game of Inches and discoverer of William Edward White’s status as the first African American ballplayer in the major leagues, has a new blog—and in his very first entry floats a possible death date for the elusive Dobie Moore.  Peter found a death record for Walter Moore, born February 8, 1895, in Atlanta, Georgia, which matches the February 8, 1896, birth date on the World War II draft card originally found by John Bowman.  Given his parents’ names (Waddie Moore and Julia Drummond), Peter was able to trace this Walter Moore’s family back to Atlanta in the 1900 census, and forward to Detroit in 1930 and 1940—and, of course, Detroit was where Dobie settled after his Negro league career ended.

As he notes, there are a number of oddities here, including the evident fact that “Walter” Moore seems to be called “Lewis” in earlier census records.  Dobie Moore had a brother, Pete, who played (presumably semipro) ball in Detroit in the 1930s, but there’s no Pete in the Moore family (could he be Allen, the brother who moved to Detroit?).

Probably the biggest issue is that this Walter Moore died on August 20, 1947.   In January, 1948, Dobie Moore, according to the Los Angeles Sentinel, served as a pallbearer at his old teammate George Carr’s funeral in Los Angeles:

(Los Angeles Sentinel, January 29, 1948, p. 11)

It’s quite possible that the Sentinel was simply wrong.  It’s also possible that the Walter Moore we’ve identified is the wrong person, too.  At this point there’s not enough information to say for sure.  If I had to bet, though, I would wager that Peter has finally found Dobie’s death date.

Anyway, I’ve ordered a copy of the actual death certificate, so we’ll see if that adds anything to what we know.

(By the way, here’s why all the other birth and death dates that have been given for Moore are almost certainly wrong.)

negro leagues DB update: 1933

Satchel Paige, Gus Greenlee, Josh Gibson

This week we're making a slight break with chronological order and adding the 1933 Negro leagues to the Seamheads Negro Leagues DB. Many thanks to Scott Simkus, the creator of the Strat-O-Matic Negro leagues set, who did most of the heavy lifting on this.

The year 1933 marked something of a fresh beginning for the Negro leagues, with the start of a new league and the inauguration of what became black baseball's biggest event, the annual East-West All-Star Game. The Eastern Colored League had fallen apart in early 1928; its successor, the American Negro League, lasted only a single season. When the Depression broke up the original Negro National League in 1931, it was left to the Negro Southern League to expand temporarily into the north, while Cumberland Posey's East-West League failed to last through the 1932 season. So in 1933 numbers king Gus Greenlee, owner of the independent Pittsburgh Crawfords, started a new Negro National League, one that, unlike Rube Foster's original, tried to bring the east coast and the Midwest together.

The tough economic times continued, and it was hard for Greenlee to keep the league up and going. The Chicago American Giants were evicted from Schorling Park, their home since the team's founding by Rube Foster back in 1911, when it was turned into a dog racing track When the Indianapolis A.B.C.'s moved to Detroit due to low attendance, the American Giants moved to Indianapolis and started playing their home games in the A.B.C.'s former park, Perry Stadium. The Homestead Grays were kicked out in July for poaching two players (Big Jim Williams and Jimmy Binder) from Detroit. Syd Pollock's Cuban Stars opted against taking the Grays' place, and subsequent attempts at placing teams in Akron and Cleveland didn't last long. In the end only the American Giants, Nashville Elite Giants, and Greenlee's own Pittsburgh Crawfords finished the season. The Crawfords and the American Giants both claimed the championship; it wasn't until well into the 1934 season that the Giants conceded the 1933 title to Pittsburgh.

The Crawfords are possibly the most famous team in Negro league history, featuring five Hall of Famers. Their offense was led by the 21-year-old Josh Gibson, by far the league's dominant hitter (.411, 14 home runs), and the 35-year-old first baseman/manager Oscar Charleston (.352, 12 homers). Their pitching may have been even more impressive, with southpaws Sam Streeter (8-2, 2.62) and Leroy Matlock (7-5) and right-hander Bert Hunter (8-1) taking pressure off the undisputed star, Satchel Paige. Paige's won-lost record (4-6) doesn't look like much, but he struck out 77 hitters in 80 innings, sported the Negro leagues' best ERA (2.03). In four of his ten starts against major Negro league competition, Paige suffered 2-0, 2-1, 2-1, and 3-1 losses.

As great as the Crawfords look, the American Giants were more than worthy rivals, with four future Hall of Famers of their own. Though Rube Foster was dead, under the management of Foster protégé Dave Malarcher the Giants had scooped up several of the star players cut loose by the end of Foster's old Negro National League, most notably Willie Wells and Mule Suttles from the defunct St. Louis Stars, and Turkey Stearnes (.346/.404/.590) from the old Detroit Stars. Together with a pitching staff led by Rube's younger brother Willie Foster (6-4, 2.56), the Giants' stars took the first half pennant, and pushed the Crawfords the whole way during the second half.

The Nashville Elite Giants couldn't quite keep up with the big boys, but they did feature fine performances from veteran lefthander Percy "Dimps" Miller (6-2, 3.01), outfielder Wild Bill Wright (.336), catcher Tommie Dukes (.340), and second baseman Sammy T. Hughes (.341). The Baltimore Black Sox, now owned by Joe Cambria, had lost a court battle with former investors and lost the rights to the "Black Sox" name---they played the 1933 season as the Baltimore Sox, with shortstop Jake Dunn (.392) and a towering young southpaw named Stuart Jones (5-3) providing some rare bright spots. The Columbus Blue Birds, managed by Dizzy Dismukes, seemed promising at first, but good hitting from outfielder Jabbo Andrews (.398) and shortstop Leroy Morney (.382) couldn't make up for poor pitching.

The Akron Grays were cobbled together out of players from church teams and local sandlots in both Akron and Pontiac, Michigan, along with a few journeyman veterans (catcher Clarence "Spoony" Palm and outfielder Lou Dials) and a couple of high-profile pitchers on loan from other league teams (Bert Hunter from the Crawfords, Willie Powell from the American Giants). They pretty much performed to expectation. The Cleveland Giants started the 1933 season as a semipro team featuring a female infielder named Isabelle Baxter; upon entering the league they were provided with a roster drawn from the other defunct Ohio teams (Akron and Columbus). They only managed to complete a single league game, a 14 to 7 loss to the Crawfords, then failed to show up for subsequent games in Pittsburgh and Nashville. Disputes over these forfeits contributed greatly to the confusion that marred the season's conclusion.

Greenlee's league aspired to take in the whole blackball world, but several important teams were leery of committing themselves. The Kansas City Monarchs remained aloof, preferring for the most part to barnstorm. The New York Black Yankees (who, despite their name, actually operated out of Hinchliffe Stadium in Paterson, New Jersey) claimed the world's colored championship after defeating the Crawfords in a late-season series. Ed Bolden, the key figure behind the old Eastern Colored League, had lost control of his Hilldale Club (which folded after the 1932 season), but founded a new independent team, originally known as Bolden's Philadelphia All-Stars. Behind the hitting of Rap Dixon (.394/.462/.628) and Jud Wilson (.372/.456/.551), the Stars served notice that they would be a team to be reckoned with in the future.

Next up for the DB: 1928 and 1934 Negro leagues; East-West All-Star Games; Mexican League 1937-1954; 1918/19 through 1922/23 and 1927/28 Cuban leagues, including Babe Ruth's famous appearance in Havana with the New York Giants in 1920.

(Crossposted at Seamheads.com)

isabelle baxter

Since I wrote about Pearl Barrett, a woman who played for the Havana Stars of Chicago in 1917, I’ve run into another woman playing for an otherwise all-male black semi-pro team:

(Chicago Defender, June 17, 1933, p. 8)

The Cleveland Giants were a local independent club that played in the Cleveland Colored Baseball League, but they were taken over by more ambitious ownership in July, and in August joined the Negro National League.  The roster was overhauled; in a deal brokered by league president Gus Greenlee, players from the defunct Akron and Columbus clubs were added to the Giants.  So Baxter didn’t play in any Negro league games (like Toni Stone, Connie Morgan, and Mamie Johnson would in the 1950s), but she did play for a team that would soon join the Negro leagues.

Isabelle Baxter is mentioned in Harold Seymour’s The People’s Game and in several other sources, so she’s not new to historians.  I haven’t been able to find out anything for sure about her.  There was an Isabelle Baxter living in Cincinnati in the 1930 census, aged 15 (which would have made her 18 when she played for the Giants), living with her parents, William and Florence Baxter, and siblings Julie, Walter, William Jr., and Bettie J. Baxter.  But of course that’s not a certain ID.

grant johnson

I know about the Buck O’Neil and Minnie Miñoso controversies, but for my money the biggest omission in the 2006 election of Negro leaguers to the Hall of Fame was Grant “Home Run” Johnson—the best African American ballplayer of the 1890s and early 1900s, the biggest star in black baseball before Rube Foster (and probably co-equal with Rube for a few years in the 1900s), organizer and manager of great teams from the Page Fence Giants to the Cuban League champion Habana B.B.C. in the 1911/12 winter season, and still one of the best hitters in black baseball in his late thirties and early forties.

I’m happy to report that, through the efforts of Howard Henry and Jeremy Krock, Johnson will be getting a marker for his grave at the Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, New York.  As part of this effort I recently supplied Howard with some photos of Johnson, so, for no particular reason, here are a few:

Grant Johnson with the 1894 Findlay Sluggers, an integrated team that also featured Bud Fowler.

The 1896 Page Fence Giants, with Johnson standing second from right.

 

Johnson from a photo of the 1904 Cuban X Giants.

 

Photos of Pete Hill and Grant Johnson from the Philadelphia Inquirer (April 23, 1905), one of several items on the same page promoting the Philadelphia Giants.  This image of Johnson would later be reprinted in Sol White’s History of Colored Base Ball (1907).

The 1905 Philadelphia Giants, with Johnson standing at far left, next to Rube Foster (for some reason his name is not written on the photo like the other players).

A photo of Johnson published in the Brooklyn Standard Union, October 18, 1905.

 

The 1906 Brooklyn Royal Giants, with Johnson standing third from left.

 

Several players from the 1911/12 Habana Base Ball Club of the Cuban National League, from the 1911 Spalding Baseball Guide, Spanish American Edition.

 

Grant Johnson dressed to the nines, date unknown.

 

the santop montage

Hake’s has put up for auction a rather amazing piece from the Richard Merkin collection.  It’s astonishing, a one of a kind artifact: a montage of numerous photos of Negro league players from the 1910s, many of them images I’ve never seen before, including some fairly obscure players.  It’s dominated by pictures of Louis Santop (14 individual images in all, not counting the team photos). 

The montage’s history seems completely unknown; Hake’s speculates that it was perhaps made for Santop himself.  At the top and bottom are a number of team photos; the center is filled with photos of individual players, many from Palm Beach, Florida, winter baseball in the mid-1910s.  There are also a number of players in Indianapolis ABCs uniforms, which might also be from one of the team’s sojourns in Florida.

Here are some of the highlights (for me, anyway).

Lee Wade with mascot; Ashby Dunbar.

Bill Pettus.

The “Female Giants,” Florida 1913.  The players are wearing both Royal Poinciana and Brooklyn (Royal Giants?) jerseys.

Some of the Santop images.

1911 St. Louis Giants. 

It’s hard to tell, but I think  the two guys seated in the front might be Eugene Moore (on the left) and Joe Hewitt (on the right); Steel Arm Johnny Taylor might be seated in the middle, second from left; and Ben Taylor might be standing, second from left.

 

Leroy Grant, Louis Santop, Joe Hewitt, John Henry Lloyd; bottom left is catcher Burlin White; bottom center Bill Gatewood pitching.

I would love to see a large, high-resolution image of this montage printed on a fold-out sheet in a coffee-table book.  Come to think of it, I’d like to see a well-designed Negro league coffee table book, period.  There are a number of smaller books of photos, particularly the fine Black Baseball in… series, with volumes on Kansas City, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Detroit.  But possibly the only publication that really qualifies as a Negro league coffee-table book would be Phil Dixon’s The Negro Baseball Leagues: A Photographic History—and that is, I believe, out of print. There are hundreds—maybe thousands—of great images that are scattered around in other books, on the internet, and in collections.

UPDATE 5:04 p.m. I should also mention Smoke: The Romance and Lore of Cuban Baseball, by Mark Rucker and Peter Bjarkman, which is another of my favorite books of photographs.

buxton wonders

It may come as something of a surprise that Iowa, of all states, has a fairly rich Negro league history.  The Algona Brownies were an important professional team in the early 1900s. In 1912 the original All-Nations Club was founded in Des Moines.  The Chicago Union Giants barnstormed across Iowa for decades, and in 1917 an offshoot of that team, Gilkerson’s Union Giants, got its start as the Lost Island Giants.  And then there were the Buxton Wonders. 

Buxton was a coal-mining town that sprang up in Monroe County around mines owned by the Consolidation Coal Company—the largest coal mines west of the Mississippi at that time.  It was a company town, named after the company president, Ben Buxton, and populated by a racially diverse group of miners largely drawn from the coal country of Virginia and West Virginia, but also including Swedish and Australian immigrants.  African Americans formed the single biggest ethnic group, including a large number of miners but also lawyers, entrepreneurs, doctors, and other professionals.

Buxton, Iowa, in the early 1900s.  (Wayne I. Anderson, Iowa’s Geological Past: Three Billion Years of Change, p. 255.)

 The Buxton Wonders were founded around 1901, and quickly became one of the town’s main attractions.  Like the town itself, the Wonders peaked around 1909 and 1910, in the former year playing a number of games against the best black teams in the Midwest, including the Leland Giants, St. Paul Gophers, and Kansas City (Kansas) Giants.  They managed to win only two games against these clubs while losing six and tying one.  But one of their wins, as well as the tie, came against the mighty Leland Giants (unfortunately box scores haven’t been recovered yet).  Although Buxton had several newspapers, apparently nothing from 1909 survives (or has been usefully archived yet).

 A number of 1909 Wonders players—Lefty Pangburn, Mule Armstrong, Walter Taylor, Dee Williams—moved on to other major teams, Taylor switching to Kansas City after the Wonders travelled there in June, Williams following him in September.  The Wonders’ captain was George Neal, who also played for the Chicago Giants and the Leland Giants.

Buxton Wonders, 1911.   George Neal is standing, far right.

Here’s a fascinating article about the Buxton Wonders from the Le Mars, Iowa, paper in 1977, featuring interviews with former Buxton residents:

(Le Mars Daily Sentinel, November 10, 1977, p. 5)

The Wonders continued, even as the black proportion of Buxton’s population began to decline, and a few white players joined the team.  But they never recovered the prominence they’d attained in 1909.  By the early 1920s coal production in Iowa began to decline, and the mines were exhausted or shut down.  George Neal had long since returned to his hometown of Springfield, Illinois, where he sometimes managed the Union Giants.

 

(Daily Illinois State Register, April 4, 1922, p. 10.)

 In 1923 Buxton’s post office was closed, and within a few years nobody was left in Buxton at all.  In the 1980s a major archeological study of the town was conducted, and much work was done to interview former inhabitants and to reconstruct the town’s history, including the story of the Buxton Wonders.  Now Buxton itself is just a ghost town, little more than some sparse ruins and an historical marker.

(Le Mars Semi-Weekly Sentinel, December 11, 1923, p. 7)

For more on Buxton, see:

Iowa Pathways: The Great Buxton

Blackpast.org: Buxton, Iowa (1895-1927)

African American Museum of Iowa: No Roads Lead to Buxton

Coal Mining in Iowa

Memories of Minnie London, former Buxton resident

Buxton: A Black Utopia in the Heartland