carlos morán: southpaw third baseman

I wanted to pull this from the comments: Brent Moulton has finally found a contemporary reference to Carlos Morán throwing left-handed—hiding in plain sight, in the New York Times of all places!  Here’s what Brent says:

While looking for something else, I finally ran across a reference to Morán throwing left handed in this article from The New York Times, December 18, 1910, about the Detroit Tigers series that had just concluded. The article was written by Hall-of-Fame umpire Billy Evans and was one of a series of articles published by the Times that winter about baseball in Cuba. (To read other articles in the series, go the nytimes.com site and type in the Search box: “billy evans” cuba baseball; then select NYT Archive 1851-1980.) This article also includes an interesting description of Julián Castillo as the Cecil Fielder of the deadball era. It would be interesting to see a contemporary photo of him; there's no way that he weighed 260-285 pounds when the picture was taken that appears on page 85 of Figueredo.

Another question -- both the Times article and the photo above use the name “Sam Lloyd” for John H. Lloyd - does anyone know what that's about?

A couple of comments:

1) This is the famous series where Lloyd (.500, 11 for 22), Grant Johnson (.412, 7 for 17—with 7 walks), and Bruce Petway (.389, 7 for 18) all outhit Sam Crawford (.360, 18 for 50) and Ty Cobb (.350, 7 for 20; Cobb was reported at 7 for 19, .368, but I’m pretty sure that’s wrong).  (Carlos Morán, by the way, hit 8 for 24 with three walks in six games.)  It’s also the series in which Petway was supposed to have thrown out Cobb stealing anywhere from three to seven straight times, whereupon Cobb supposedly swore never to step on a diamond with black players again. 

I’ve only been able to document Petway throwing out Cobb once in the series, on his only known stolen base attempt in Cuba.  Cobb played only five games total, two against Petway’s Habana team.  For one of them, a 3-0 Habana win on November 28, I have a play by play account; in this one Petway nailed Cobb trying to steal second in the fourth inning.  For Cobb’s other appearance against Habana, a 12 to 4 Detroit win on December 4, I have no play-by-play.  Cobb came to the plate five times, going 2 for 5 with three runs scored.  I suppose it’s possible that Cobb made it on base all five times (with errors, fielders’ choices, etc.), but he couldn’t have been thrown out stealing more than twice, since he scored three times.  Petway does have two assists. It seems a little unlikely, though; since they made such a big deal out of Méndez fanning Cobb once, you’d think there’d be at least a mention if he’d been thrown out stealing twice in one game. 

Cobb, by the way, stole no bases at all in his three games against Almendares and Gervasio González.  I have play-by-plays for two of the games, and he was not caught stealing in either of them; in the third he hit 1 for 5 and didn’t score, while González did have three assists, so it’s possible “Striker” got him.

I haven’t read Diario de la Marina’s accounts of this series yet (everything I have comes from La Lucha), so maybe we can fill in some gaps soon.

2) I’ve seen at least one photo of Castillo circa 1911-1912 where he looks pretty large, though I don’t know if I could tell whether he was at 260-285 lbs.  Evans notes that he went hitless in the 1910 series against Detroit; indeed that was the case, as Castillo was 0 for 20 (with one walk) in five games for Almendares. 

3) John Henry Lloyd was for some reason known as “Sam Lloyd” in Cuba around this time—I don’t have any explanation.

Comments

[Pig Broker]

"In fact, the last time I've seen "Sam" used for Lloyd was a (mistaken) 1919 report by Hugh Fullerton (the white sportswriter that broke the Black Sox scandal) that Lloyd was dead." Do you have a cite for this?

[JR]

I've seen several different explanations given for John Henry Lloyd's nickname "Sam." One, of course, is that it is short for the racist "Sambo" and another that it is related to "Uncle Sam" (interestingly, Lloyd does have a slight resemblance to both the caricature and the icon). I have a feeling that the racist interpretation is correct and the second interpretation an attempt to soften it. The same thing was done to Lloyd's usual Spanish nickname "Cuchara" [i.e. Spoon, Ladle] which began as a slur (about Lloyd's lips) but was then was changed to supposedly be a compliment about his fielding. In any case, "Sam" was commonly given as Lloyd's nickname in the 1910s but, after 1920, he was commonly nicknamed "Pop" or "Pops." In fact, the last time I've seen "Sam" used for Lloyd was a (mistaken) 1919 report by Hugh Fullerton (the white sportswriter that broke the Black Sox scandal) that Lloyd was dead.