agate type

how old was bullet rogan?

Here’s an interesting comparison (link sent to me by Fred Brillhart) of three Kansas City Royals greats to their Monarchs equivalents (with a not-so-surprise ending).  The account of Bullet Rogan’s career comes mostly from the Wikipedia entry—which, incidentally, I wrote!  It’s my only (recent) foray into Wikipedia land, and I tried very hard to conform to their guidelines.  So there’s no “original research”—everything is based on secondary sources (with 42 footnotes)—though unavoidably the article is guided by my interpretation of the sources.  One perhaps controversial decision I made was to place Rogan’s birthdate firmly in 1893 instead of 1889. 

Although this might seem at first like a minor detail, the difference of four years could strongly affect any assessment of his career.  Rogan joined the Monarchs in July 1920; his dominance of the Negro National League really got started in 1921, and lasted more or less through the 1928 season.  If he was born on July 28, 1889, as some sources have it, he would have started his NNL career at age 30 (almost 31), had his best years from age 31 through 38.  Since most players do not peak in their thirties, it would seem highly reasonable, indeed likely, that these were not really the best years of his baseball career, and that he was even better in the Army in his twenties.

If, on the other hand, he was 26 when he joined the Monarchs, and he enjoyed his best years with them from age 27 through 34, it looks a lot more likely that available records pretty much capture how good he was at his peak.

Anyway, since a couple of people have asked me about it, I thought I’d go ahead and outline the evidence so you can make up your own mind.

The main source for Rogan being born in 1893 instead of 1889 is Phil Dixon’s book The Monarchs 1920-1938, which is the closest there is to a book-length biography of Rogan, and is the most wide-ranging collection of research on Rogan and the Monarchs of the 1920s and early 1930s that exists.  (Phil is publishing a new edition with McFarland, which I don’t think is out yet.)

Phil states unequivocally that Rogan was born on July 28, 1893, in Oklahoma City, and his account of Rogan’s early years supports that birth date.  Rogan’s first professional or semiprofessional team was Fred Palace’s Colts, a team of 18 and 19-year-olds, which he joined in 1911.  Had he been born in 1889, he would have been 21 and 22 during the 1911 baseball season.  It’s difficult to believe that a talent of Rogan’s caliber would have first appeared with a team of teenagers at age 21, especially when the established Kansas City, Kansas, Giants, a professional team that had defeated Rube Foster’s Leland Giants in a 1909 series, were right there in Rogan’s home town.  Incidentally, according to Phil Dick Whitworth first joined the Colts at the same time in 1911—and he was born on August 28, 1894 or 1895.

Moreover, Phil’s account implies (though it doesn’t exactly state outright) that Rogan joined the Army right out of high school—either before graduation or directly after.  He quotes a family friend of the Rogans, Orrin Murray, saying that “Rogan moved his age up by several years, left school and joined the army” (p. 8).  He wasn’t the only future Negro Leaguer during this era who did this: Oscar Charleston, Jasper Washington, and probably Heavy Johnson also added years to their ages when enlisting.  The first two were only 15 when they joined up, and claimed to be 18; Johnson was already 18, but claimed to be 21.  While I don’t know much about this, I’d guess that you normally had to be 18 to enlist at all, but that until you were 21 you needed to have a parent or guardian’s permission. 

Rogan enlisted on October 19, 1911, reporting his age as 22 years and two months, which would be consistent with a July 28, 1889, birthdate.  I haven’t seen other military records, his World War II draft card, or his Social Security records, but it would not be surprising if the 1889 date were used in those as well.  The 1889 date also appears on a passenger list arriving in Los Angeles from a Royal Giants’ tour in Asia, which indicates that Rogan probably used his “military age” on his passport.

On the other hand, census records (with one exception) are more consistent with an 1893 birthdate.  The most important is probably the 1900 census, showing the Rogans still living in Oklahoma City, and giving a July 1893 birthdate for young Charles W. Rogan.

Here are the Rogans in the 1910 census, now living in Kansas City, Kansas. (Note that the children are all said to have been born in Tennessee.)

The one exception is the 1920 census, where, as Patrick Rock pointed out to me some time ago, Rogan is double-entered.  He appears both at Camp Stephen D. Little in Nogales, Arizona, and at Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis, Missouri.  He was probably physically (and temporarily) present at one of the locations, while at the other the census record was compiled from official records of some sort.  Anyway, at Jefferson Barracks he is listed as 30 and (accurately) born in Oklahoma, while in Arizona he is listed as 26 and born in...Alabama?

Here’s the 1930 census, with Rogan living in Kansas City, Missouri:

On the eve of the first East-West all-star game, Russell J. Cowans wrote in a brief profile of Rogan that he “was born in Oklahoma City, Okla., July 28, 1893” (Pittsburgh Courier, August 26, 1933, p. A5).

But, aside from Phil Dixon’s information about his early life and career, the best indicator that Rogan was probably born later than 1889 is in the 1890 Oklahoma Territorial Census, where we find his father Richard Rogan unmarried, without children, and still living with his widowed father and family, which had only recently moved to Oklahoma City from Sumner County, Tennessee:

UPDATE 12:28 p.m.  I forgot to include Rogan’s grave marker, which gives a birth date of July 28, 1894, presumably from family sources:

“certainly our ball players are professionals” : the 25th infantry wreckers, hawaii, 1915

Patrick Rock has come up with some fascinating material on the Twenty-Fifth Infantry Wreckers in Hawaii during the teens.  The Twenty-Fifth was one of the four all-black Army regiments (also including the Twenty-Fourth Infantry and the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry) known collectively as the “Buffalo Soldiers.”  All four regiments maintained good baseball teams in the 1910s and 1920s, but the Wreckers were the preeminent Army baseball team of that time (at least among teams that stayed together for a number of years, as opposed to temporary wartime aggregations), featuring in its lineup such luminaries as Bullet Rogan, Dobie Moore, Heavy Johnson, and Branch Russell, along with a number of other future Negro league players.  The Wreckers enjoyed their heyday at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, from 1915 to 1918, and at Camp Stephen D. Little, Cochise Santa Cruz County, Arizona, from 1918 to about 1921 (or perhaps later).

Patrick has been scouring Hawaii newspapers for reports on the Wreckers and their participation in both Army leagues and competitions involving civilian teams.  I wanted to post one article he found (from the Honolulu Commercial Advertiser, July 18, 1915) about a dispute that erupted between the Twenty-Fifth and the other (non-black) Army teams at Schofield Barracks, who wanted to restrict the Wreckers’ practices and stop them from paying their players and exempting them from guard and fatigue duty.  It has long been understand that the Twenty-Fifth Infantry team was essentially a professional club, and here we have the regiment’s representative, Lt. Charles Wyman, being quite frank about it.  “Certainly our ball players are professionals,” he says.  “They have received pay for playing.”

Anyway, check out the whole article.  (You should be able to enlarge by clicking.)

 

charleston and rogan in the philippines

Uncovering Claudio Manela, the only Filipino player in the Negro Leagues (to my knowledge), got me to thinking about baseball in the Philippines, about which I know very little.  I do know that there was a fairly deep and longstanding connection between the Philippines and the Negro Leagues, starting with military baseball in the 1910s.  Oscar Charleston served in the 24th Infantry in the Philippines, and seems to have made his reputation as a ballplayer there:

(Indianapolis Freeman, January 1, 1916)

James Riley’s Biographical Encyclopedia gives this account of Charleston’s time in the Philippines:

At age fifteen, [Charleston] left home and served a stint in the Army, where he ran track (23 seconds for the 22-yard dash) and played baseball while stationed in the Philippines with the 24th Infantry.  In 1914 he was the only black baseball player in the Manila League.

As it happens, Wilber Rogan was also stationed in the Philippines with the 24th, at about the same time.  I’m not sure of the exact dates Rogan was in the Philippines, but from Phil Dixon’s biography of Rogan, it would seem that he served in the Philippines at least from 1912 until he was discharged from the 24th on October 13, 1914 (after which the 25th Infantry, then stationed in Hawaii, outmaneuvered the 9th Cavalry and claimed Rogan for another five years of Army baseball).  It would be interesting to know whether Rogan and Charleston knew of each other, or played with (or against) each other in the Philippines.

Rogan, by the way, would later revisit the Philippines as a member of the Philadelphia Royal Giants, a touring team put together by West Coast promoter Lonnie Goodwin.

did casey stengel discover bullet rogan?

Reproduced below, with David Skinner’s permission, are some excerpts from several email conversations I’ve had with him about Casey Stengel, J. L. Wilkinson, Bullet Rogan, and the 25th Infantry Wreckers.  I’ve drawn on David’s research in some of these posts, but thought readers deserved to see everything he had to say.  (The excerpts are from two different emails sent several months apart, and overlap a little in subject matter.)

I respectfully disagree [David writes] that there is ANY evidence that Casey scouted Rogan for Wilkinson.  In his ghosted Casey at the Bat, he remembers him as “Grogan” and recalls playing the army team in Douglas, New Mexico.  He heaps praise on “Grogan” and credits him with later playing for the Monarchs, but makes no claim to have recommended him to Wilkinson.  This isn't to say that Casey didn't talk to Wilkie.  Casey's faulty memory is partly responsible for the misstatements of Robert Creamer in Stengel: His Life and Times, which in turn are the source for the misstatements of later writers like John Holway and Janet Bruce.

It was Creamer who decided that “Grogan” was Rogan and that Douglas, New Mexico, was Douglas, Arizona.  He should have quit while he was ahead.  I believe Creamer was the first to wrongly locate the 25th at Fort Huachuca, since it was the closest army base at the time of his writing and he didn't know of Camp Little, etc.  He may also have invented the story of Stengel tipping Wilkie about the Wreckers players, or at least Rogan.  Casey may have known Bullet, could have seen him or played against him in earlier days in Kansas City.  But he didn't scout him or even see him play in Arizona.  The Nogales Daily Herald, which I went through to research my article on the Wreckers for the Arizona Baseball Journal, tells us that Rogan, although team captain, was unavailable for the Stengel series, and that he neither pitched nor played a position.

David

***

I do know that Stengel never saw Rogan pitch in Arizona, despite his assertion that he did (although he called him Grogan), but he surely knew him from earlier days in Kansas City.  I know little about the 24th Infantry and nothing of the cavalries.  There may have been a company at least of the 24th at Camp Newell in Naco (the border town near here), by the way, the only place in the mainland U.S. to have been bombed by a foreign power (by mistake by an American mercenary flying for Mexican revolutionaries in 1919).  The Bisbee Museum has a ripped photo of a baseball team from a company of the 24th, no other ID.  I know nothing, although I would very much like to know, about baseball or players (except a story in the Douglas Daily Dispatch of a 10th Cavalry game vs.  the white 1st Cavalry team from Camp Harry J. Jones in Douglas, the third of the World War I / Mexican Revolution-era border posts) at Ft. Huachuca (where I used to teach and my son played soccer), but I do know from the post historian that the 25th was not there until after the period in question.

What I mostly know about is the 25th at Camp Stephen D. Little in Nogales in 1919, which I researched for an article in the one-shot Arizona Baseball Journal a decade or so ago.  They in fact did not play a lot of outside baseball, although each company had a team and they played each other, the details of which games were not reported.  I went through the Nogales daily for the whole year, after finding nothing in Tucson or Phoenix papers (also nil in Bisbee and Douglas dailies), and there apparently was off-post track and football (Dobie Moore starred in both) but little reported baseball.  The Wreckers were bragged by the Daily Herald as the best team in the Army, but their games were little reported, maybe a mention of winning a home game vs.  a local team from Arizona or Sonora, but no game stories. 

Until the visit of Stengel’s “K.C. All-Stars.”  The games at the Morley Avenue  grounds (site of the present WPA-built job where the Arizona-Mexico League and other ‘30s and ‘50s teams played in OB as well as the 2003 indie league club I operated, which led the league when it folded) were heavily front page promoted, initially filled with misinformation about “Stengler,” a “pitcher for the White Sox,” but later with much info about the KC players, five (including Casey, who was between engagements at the time) with major league experience, the best remembered being the catcher, future batting champ Bubbles Hargrave.  The rest of the so-called major leaguers had only had cups of coffee, two with the 1914 Buffeds, but the five noted all checked out, after allowing for misspellings.  There was a top AAA pitcher on the team as well.

The games themselves were barely covered except to note a fast game in front of a big crowd, one runs-and-hits-only line score.  Moore hit a big home run to win one game, one result (the final game) was never reported, and nothing more about baseball after the morning of game 3.  Captain Rogan, as he was called (his baseball rather than army title; all commissioned officers were of course white), did not play.  Little else to be gleaned from the Herald, just a lineup for one game with a few last names of future Negro Leaguers: Ward, 3B, White, RF, Johnson (which one?) C, Fagen (sic) 2B, Herring 1B, Moore, SS, making them the only Negro Leaguers I could confirm playing vs. “K.C.”  It was previously reported that “Captain Rogan and his aggregation of hitters,” would not be there, with the two future Negro Leaguers among them being Goliath and Hawkins.  Other Negro League names of Wrecker players mentioned during the season include OF McNair and P Cooper.  Of course most of the above names are linked to the Monarchs, but you know of Herring (and a Johnson!) with the 1920 St. Louis Giants; Goliath, Ward, and White were with the 1920 Chicago Giants.  It seems more than the Monarchs benefited from the 25th, but Wilkie certainly got the cream.

David

David also pointed out that the 25th Infantry was not, in 1919-1920, stationed at Ft.  Huachuca:

The 25th moved from Hawaii to Camp Stephen D. Little, and would not move to Ft.  Huachuca for some time.  To quote my article in the Arizona Baseball Journal:

Part of the confusion comes from the fact that Ft. Huachuca was long the home of black regiments, and that the 25th actually was stationed there from 1932 to 1942, and elements of it were there from 1928 to 1931.  In 1919, however, the 10th Cavalry, at Huachuca from 1913 to 1931, was the only black regiment on post.

I footnote that from Cornelius Smith’s post history, but the dates were confirmed for me by the post historian, directly from army records.

David

I also wanted to add to David’s commentary the fact that by 1920 J. L. Wilkinson had already known Wilber Rogan for several years.  According to Phil Dixon, Rogan pitched briefly for Wilkinson’s All-Nations club during a furlough from the Army in 1917, including one game (a loss) against the St. Louis Giants (see his book The Monarchs 1920-1938, pages 24-25).

rogan sighting

Just ran across this brief note in the June 5, 1920, Chicago Defender on the anticipated debut of a certain Army ballplayer with the Kansas City Monarchs:

The Monarchs are expecting a fellow soon, Rogan by name, and big leaguers who have seen him work pronounce him the best ever.  He is with the 24th regiment and will report the middle of June.

A couple of interesting points: 1) this accords with Dave Wyatt’s statement, discussed here, that Wilkinson had signed Rogan “early last spring,” and more generally with the notion that Rogan’s arrival was planned well in advance, rather than occurring on the spur of the moment in St. Louis in late June or early July; and 2) he’s here said to be with the 24th rather than the 25th.  Both units were stationed in Arizona in early 1920; it’s still not clear what the story is behind Rogan’s presence in St. Louis in January.

from the wreckers to the st. louis giants

Today we pick up where we left off yesterday, but tack in a slightly different direction.

It turns out that on June 28, 1920, just days before Bullet Rogan and Dobie Moore, veterans of the 25th Infantry “Wreckers” baseball team, debuted with the Kansas City Monarchs in St. Louis, the St. Louis Giants played a game against—the 25th Infantry team.  However, neither Moore nor Rogan are to be found in the box score, though several other Negro League names are, as well as a rather interesting pitcher.  Here it is, from the June 29, 1920, St. Louis Globe-Democrat:

Unless the Ellers were a very progressive family for the 1920s, it would seem that the 25th Infantry played behind a white pitcher that day.  (Hod Eller, incidentally, would show up as an umpire for some Negro National League games played in Cincinnati in 1921.) Now, check out the second game of the Monarchs/Giants series, played on July 4 (Globe-Democrat, July 5, 1920):

Three of the Giants’ players—Herring, Stewart, and Johnson—appear in their lineup for the first time that season.  And the same three names appeared in the 25th Infantry lineup on June 28.  Lastly (for today) here’s Dave Wyatt’s story on Rogan’s first appearance in Chicago on July 5 (Defender, July 10, 1920):

Wyatt corroborates the acquisition by St. Louis of three Army players, one of them “a catcher who is said to be the peer of them all”--all the baseball players recently let out of the Army, that is (at least that’s how I read it).  Johnson played first base on July 4 against the Monarchs, but on July 5, with the Monarchs in Chicago, the St. Louis Giants hosted the Cuban Stars, with Johnson behind the plate.  What the heck—I’ll post that one, too (Globe-Democrat, July 6, 1920):

After helping beat the Cubans, Johnson promptly disappeared from the St. Louis lineup.  Herring and Stewart remain through much of the rest of the season, but as far as I can tell, Johnson is gone.  So who was he?  Tune in tomorrow.

where’s wilber?

…Wilber “Bullet” Rogan, that is, Kansas City Monarchs Hall of Fame pitcher/outfielder.  His early career was spent mostly in the Army, playing at Hawaii’s Schofield Barracks for the 25th Infantry’s famous “Wreckers,” until the 25th was transferred to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, on the Mexican border, during the First World War.  When he got out of the Army in late June or early July 1920, J. L. Wilkinson of the Monarchs brought Rogan and his Army teammate Walter “Dobie” Moore back to the Midwest (Rogan grew up in Kansas City, and had briefly pitched for Wilkinson’s All-Nations Club while on furlough in 1917).

Dave Wyatt of the Chicago Defender tells the story of Rogan’s first appearance in Chicago (Defender, July 10, 1920):

“…Manager Wilkinson signed him early last spring; the boy made a three nights’ ride and jumped out with strange support, facing one of the best teams in the country and gave an exhibition of hurling that had 10,000 fans yelping and the American Giants standing on their heads.”

The game was on July 5; Rogan beat the American Giants 4-2 on one hit, striking out 11.  Wyatt doesn’t exactly say this was Rogan’s Negro National League debut, but he does strongly imply that he was fresh off a train from the far west (though the reference to an early spring signing is a little confusing; presumably Wilkinson signed him, then had to wait until he was free of his military obligations).

However, I’ve run across a couple of interesting things that tell us a little more about Rogan’s transition from the Army to the Negro Leagues.  First, there’s this box score, from the July 4, 1920, St. Louis Globe-Democrat:

This is in fact the first Negro National League game that Dobie Moore (“A. Moore”) and Bullet Rogan (called “Rugout” here) played for the Kansas City Monarchs, two days before the July 5 game in Chicago.

So Rogan and Moore actually started their NNL careers in St. Louis, not Chicago.  A small thing, perhaps.  But consider this: while working on a long-term project involving Negro League players in the 1920 census, I found Wilber Rogan.  But he wasn’t in Arizona, where the 25th Infantry (and several other black units) were still stationed at that time.  Instead, he was at the Army’s Jefferson Barracks—in St. Louis.  There’s really no doubt this is Bullet Rogan: he’s listed as having been born in Oklahoma, and his age is given as 30, matching Bullet’s accepted age for many years (though he was really, according to Phil Dixon, 26 at this time, having added four years to his age when he joined the Army back in 1911).  His census entry gives his rank as private, and his occupation as a “machinist helper.”  He is also one of only three black men on the whole post, as far as I could tell.

The census was taken in January—Rogan was counted on January 6, to be precise.  It’s possible he was temporarily assigned to Jefferson Barracks, then returned to Arizona, only to rush back to the Midwest in early summer to join the Monarchs.  But it’s certainly an interesting coincidence that in January he was assigned to the very same city where he would make his NNL debut in July.  Dobie Moore, by the way, was in Arizona in January; “Walter Moore” (24, born in Georgia) can be found in the census at Camp Stephen D. Little, Nogales, Arizona—on the same census page as Branch Russell and William Linder, other 25th Infantry veterans and eventual Monarchs.

Only mildly interesting so far, perhaps (though Rogan’s “three nights’ ride” from the west may not have occurred quite the way Wyatt seems to imply it did).  But there’s more to the story, which I’ll pick up tomorrow.

THANKS (11.1.06, 10:13 a.m.) to Phil Dixon for supplying the full name of Camp Stephen D. Little (the census records truncate it to “Camp Stephen”).