agate type

schorling park, chicago: may 27, 1923

 Here, in a wonderfully high-res scan from Robert Edward Auctions, is a panoramic photograph of a 1923 Chicago American Giants-Kansas City Monarchs game at Schorling Park.

(click to enlarge)
 
You will recognize this photograph from one of my posts a couple of years ago—it appeared, with the same captions and insets (the box with the series scores on the left, the photo of Rube Foster on the right), in a 1925 book edited by John Taitt called Souvenir of Negro Progress: Chicago, 1779-1925, and can be found (in a lower-res version) at the New York Public Library’s Digital Gallery.

Contrary to the description on the auction page, the Negro National League did not hold playoffs between the top two teams from 1920 through 1923.  The pennant winner was simply the team with the best record at the end of the season.  So this game was not part of a championship series.  It was, in fact, a normal regular-season contest, held on Sunday, May 27, 1923, with over 17,000 in attendance.  It was so crowded they put up temporary grandstands—one of which, holding 1500 people, collapsed at the end of the seventh inning.  Amazingly only 28 people suffered serious injuries, and the game was resumed.

 
(Chicago Daily Tribune, May 28, 1923, page 3)

It was a “great game,” as the Defender said; here’s the box score and play-by-play, if you want to check it out.

 (Chicago Defender, June 2, 1923, page 10) 

This was game 2 of a four-game sweep by the American Giants that put them in first place.  These were the dates of the games:

May 26:  American Giants 3, Monarchs 2

May 27:  American Giants 5, Monarchs 4

May 28:  American Giants 3 (or 6; see below), Monarchs 2

May 29:  American Giants 7, Monarchs 4

The score of game 3 is listed in the box on the left side of the photograph as 3-2 American Giants.  The Chicago Defender agreed, printing a box score that showed it finishing 3-2.  The Chicago Tribune, however, gave the score as 6-2 Chicago.  Which score was correct?

Both, it turns out, depending on which rule you apply about walk-off home runs.  With the bases loaded, two out, and the score tied 2-2 in the bottom of the tenth, the Giants’ Harry Kenyon smashed a grand slam home run over the center field fence.  By the rule that pertained in the major leagues prior to 1920, teams that won in the bottom of the last inning could only win by one run.  So a batter who struck a game-winning hit was only awarded the hit necessary to get the winning run over the plate.  In Kenyon’s case, the Giants only needed one run to win, so under this rule he would be credited only with a single, enough to get Cristóbal Torriente from third to home.

Even though that rule had been eliminated by the major leagues in 1920, the Chicago Defender applied it to the May 28 game, and credited Kenyon only with the single (and only Torriente with the first run scored in the inning), giving the score as 3 to 2.  The Tribune, however, applied the rule in its modern form, and credited Kenyon with his home run, gave runs scored to Jim Brown, John Beckwith, and Kenyon, and put the score at 6 to 2.

(Chicago Defender, June 2, 1923, page 10)

 

(Chicago Daily Tribune, May 29, 1923, page 21)

john preston hill

Ron Hill told me today that the Hall of Fame is changing Pete Hill’s plaque to reflect his correct full name.  Not only that, but they will be holding a special ceremony on Pete’s birthday, October 12, to re-commemorate his election to the Hall.

(Chicago Defender, October 28, 1916)

over the top

Somebody working for the American Giants got a little carried away…

(Chicago Defender, May 25, 1918)

It probably doesn’t need to be pointed out that this ad ran in the middle of one of history’s bloodiest conflicts.

schorling park, 1912

Kevin Johnson found this 1912 Sanborn map of the Chicago American Giants’ home field, Schorling Park (formerly South Side Park, a.k.a. White Sox Park), located on W. 39th Street between Princeton and Wentworth avenues.

history in fragments

Anybody who knows better can tell me differently, but as far as I know there is only a single microfilm edition of the Chicago Defender.  The original copy came (I believe) from the University of Chicago.  Unfortunately, while this is a decent run of the paper, it is far from complete or pristine.  Some entire issues are missing, or are represented by only a couple of pages (such as July 14 and July 21, 1917).   Since the Defender was in those days a weekly paper, such gaps in the record can have a huge impact.

Then there are problems like this:  a full, play-by-play account of an American Giants-Cuban Stars game (played on June 10, 1917, one of the few games Dick Redding lost all season) that was mangled in the University of Chicago’s original copy of the paper.  We’re left with only the first four and a half innings.  You can just make out that Frank Warfield threw out Bill Francis to start the bottom of the fifth; but what happened to Leroy Grant or Bruce Petway, who batted after him?

 

Now, if another library—just one other library—has a run of the actual, printed-on-paper Chicago Defender, we would stand a very good chance of being able to fill in the gaps left by the standard microfilm edition—just as I did with a couple of Cuban Stars games in 1921.  But did  anybody else save the paper?  It’s true that probably not that many libraries would have subscribed to and saved African-American newspapers in the first half of the twentieth century; but really, no place else, not even in New York City or Philadelphia, or even somewhere else in Chicago?  And what about the Chicago Defender itself?  What little I know about it suggests that black weeklies, due to cost and space constraints, simply haven’t been able to keep complete archives, especially from decades ago.

If anybody knows of a library or collection or archive that houses an honest-to-goodness dead-tree run of the Defender (not just a few scattered issues, but a stretch of years) from the first three or four decades of the twentieth century, let me know.

gunthers park (1904) & pyotts (early 1920s)

Speaking of early 20th-century semiprofessional baseball in Chicago, Scott Simkus has posted photos of Gunthers Park, ca. 1904, and the Pyotts club in the early 1920s, courtesy of Tom Niesen.  Tom is the great-great-grandson of William C. Niesen, who owned both clubs.  These clubs were sometime members of the famous Chicago City League and frequent opponents of the Leland Giants and their successors the Chicago American Giants, as well as other African American clubs (not to mention the Cuban Stars).

schorling park, chicago 1925

Here’s an image I’m not sure I’ve seen before, of Schorling Park during an American Giants’ game in the mid-1920s.  It can be found at the New York Public Library’s Digital Gallery, and comes originally from John Taitt’s Souvenir of Negro Progress: Chicago, 1779-1925.

josé del valle méndez

When Patrick Rock and I were searching for Negro Leaguers and Cuban ballplayers with World War I draft cards, one player we didn’t find at the time was José Méndez—even though he was in the United States in September, 1918, when a man of his age would have been required to register, citizen or not.  At the time he was playing for the Chicago American Giants, having been brought in to replace the shortstop Bobby Williams, lost to the draft.  (This was during the period when Méndez did very little pitching, and made his living as an infielder.)

I’ve continued research on the World War I cards over the past year, making occasional finds, but Méndez was always a low priority, as I assumed we pretty much knew everything there was to know about him.  Then, a few weeks ago, it dawned on me that I had seen several full names given for him:

“José Méndez Ramos,” from a roster list published in La Lucha (January 26, 1912);

“José de la Caridad Méndez Arco de Tejada,” from Roberto González Echevarría’s The Pride of Havana (p. 130);

“José Méndez Baez,” from James Riley’s Biographical Encyclopedia (p. 545).

“José de la Caridad Méndez Baez,” from his Hall of Fame plaque.

So I went looking for Méndez in the World War I draft again, to see what name he used there.  Of the 211 men named José Méndez who registered, only three lived in Chicago.  Of them, two were listed as white (one a Mexican citizen); the other, the only black man named José Méndez to register for the draft in Chicago, was this one:

                                    (click to enlarge)

So we have José del Valle Méndez, born January 2, 1885, whereas the official birthdate for the Hall of Famer José Méndez is March 19, 1887. He is listed as “negro” and a Cuban citizen.  His occupation, cigar maker, is in fact the one tradition assigns Méndez (see González Echevarría, p. 131), and one that’s given for him on some early passenger lists to the United States (in 1910 traveling with the Stars of Cuba, for example).  He is not listed as a professional ballplayer, but then neither were José Méndez’s teammates Pete Hill and Bruce Petway, who registered on the same day in the same city and who had been professionals for many years (both Hill and Petway listed themselves as civilian workers for the Army, as it happens).  General Crowder’s “work or fight” order had classified sports as a non-essential occupation and led to the suspension of organized baseball on September 2.  Independent and semipro baseball continued (Hill, Petway, and Méndez were all playing for the American Giants on days surrounding the September 12 registration day), but the players who had to register at that time often (though not always) put other occupations (as did some major league players, for example Burt Shotton, Hal Chase, and Jack Coombs).

José del Valle Méndez may have been a cigarmaker, but his employer looks very much like…Rube Foster.  The microfilm from which the Ancestry.com scan was made, however, was flawed and streaked, so it could be “Robt. Foster,” or something else.  The employer’s address is 3242 Vernon Ave., although the “Vernon” is obscured by another streak.  Rube Foster’s address on that same date (September 12, 1918), as well as in the 1920 census, was 3242 Vernon Avenue.

                                    (click to enlarge)

Returning to the Méndez card, it appears that in the box reserved for checking one’s “native born” status, he wrote “Cardenas, Cuba,” probably misunderstanding the purpose of the box.  Cárdenas, of course, is where José Méndez was born.

(I love it, btw, that Méndez’s physical condition is, like the werewolf’s hair, pronounced “perfect.”)

So, what do you think?  If my interpretation of the handwriting on the card is correct (it would be immensely useful to see the actual card), and this José Méndez worked for Rube Foster at 3242 Vernon Avenue, Chicago, then we have both a different birthdate and a different name for Méndez than any we have seen before—and in his own handwriting, which would grant it a particular authority.

UPDATE 8:06 p.m. I think I can add another strong point in favor of José del Valle Méndez being our man.  On the card his nearest relative is one “Marcelina del Valle,” living on Factoria street in Havana.  José Méndez’s mother, as evidenced by a number of passenger lists on which she was listed as his relative or contact in Cuba, was named Marcelina, and in 1917 at least she lived at No. 38 Factoria street in Havana.  Her name was evidently Marcelina Méndez Lugones; she appears under both last names and also at least once as “M. Mendez Lugones.”

the mother of all world series comebacks

Kevin Johnson’s got an article up at Seamheads.com about the 1927 World Series between the Bacharach Giants and the Chicago American Giants.  This is the first part.