agate type

1902 cuban giants

Courtesy of Brian Campf, here is a photograph of the 1902 Cuban Giants, from the pages of a 1903 issue of Tip Top Weekly, a publication aimed at kids and primarily known as the original vehicle for the Frank Merriwell serials. 

Brian wondered what (if anything) I knew about these players.  Here goes:

1) Green is probably not Pete Green, a Brooklyn high school graduate whom I’ve got born in 1891.  However, there is some reason to think that Pete Green might have been several years older than that, in fact just old enough to be playing professionally in 1903, so stay tuned.

2) William “Hippo” Galloway, who as a third baseman for the Woodstock club of the Canadian League in 1899 was the last (known) black player in organized baseball until Jackie Robinson (give or take Charlie Grant in 1901, Jimmy Claxton in 1916, and any number of Cubans).  It would probably be most accurate to say that Galloway was the last openly black player in organized baseball.

3) I don’t know anything about Day yet, but I have seen his name in plenty of box scores.

4) Sampson was evidently nicknamed “Clam Hand,” but other than that I’ve got nothing.

5) The outfielder “King” Kelly was supposed to be a “funny coacher,” but I don’t have his first name yet.

6) John García was a Cuban-born catcher who grew up in the United States.  He would die from a heart attack suffered during a game in 1904.  I wrote an article about him in the Outsider Baseball Bulletin in 2010.

7) John “Pop” Watkins was, of course, a very well-known coach who organized a number of second-tier teams up and down the east coast, most notably the Havana Red Sox.  He discovered and developed a number of future stars, such as Phil Cockrell, Toussaint Allen, Dennis Graham, and George Dixon.  I wrote a series of posts on him a few years ago.

8) I know nothing about the shortstop Bolan other than his name.

9) Wallace Clifford Gordon was an infielder from Painesville, Ohio.  His career has been attributed to the catcher/first baseman Sam Gordon, who was from West Virginia.  Wallace Gordon played for the Cuban Giants for many years.  He was standing next to William Bedford when Bedford was killed by lightning at Inlet Park in Atlantic City in 1909.  (That makes two Cuban Giants players who died in on-field incidents in the 1900s.)  At the end of his career he played for the Indianapolis ABCs in 1914 and 1915, and published poetry in the Indianapolis Ledger.

louis bellinger and central baseball park

Louis A. S. Bellinger and Alexander McDonald Williams

A couple of years ago Geri Strecker published a fantastic article on Greenlee Field, home of the Pittsburgh Crawfords, in the pages of Black Ball: A Journal of the Negro Leagues.  It’s an absolute must-read, if you can get your hands on a copy.  In it, among other things, Geri shows how the park was designed and built by a prominent African American architect, Louis A. S. Bellinger, meaning that Greenlee Field was, as it were, a black production from start to finish.

As it turns out, Greenlee Field wasn’t the only Negro league ballpark that could be characterized this way.  Cleveland’s Tate Field (later Hooper Field), for example, was built in 1921 by a black contractor named George Roven Hooper.  We don’t (yet) know who built Stars Park in St. Louis or Lewis Park in Memphis in 1922, Giants Park in St. Louis in 1919, or Hilldale Park in 1914, so it’s quite possible that African American architects and/or contractors were involved in those projects as well.

But we do know about one other Negro league ballpark.  Last spring Dr. McDonald “Mac” Williams, English professor and the son of Pittsburgh Keystones owner Alexander McDonald Williams, submitted an official proposal to the Pennsylvania Historical Museum Commission for a state marker to be placed on the site of his father’s ballpark, Central Baseball Park.  As part of his application, he included several fascinating documents from his father’s files, including player contracts, financial statements…and receipts for lumber purchased during the building of the ballpark.  Here’s one of them:

That’s Louis A. Bellinger, and the lumber is being delivered to the approximate location of Central Park, Chauncey and Wylie.  (The date in August is actually after the ballpark hosted its first game on July 24, 1920, but newspapers noted at the time that the park was not yet finished.)  When Gus Greenlee hired Bellinger to build a home for his Crawfords in 1932, he was engaging the services of a man already experienced in ballpark design and construction, because Bellinger had built Greenlee Field’s predecessor, Central Baseball Park.

The Keystones’ ballpark also marks an important passage in Bellinger’s career, as it seems to have been his first major commission as an architect.  To my mind, this adds another justification for a historical marker, as Central Park carries significance in both the sports and the architectural history of Pittsburgh.  Unfortunately, like most of Bellinger’s work, Central Park no longer exists; its location has apparently been a vacant lot since at least the 1930s:

(From Google Maps)

It also strikes me that Greenlee Field is misunderstood if it’s thought to be a pioneering enterprise, the “first” of anything.  In fact the Crawfords’ ballpark was actually a backwards-looking enterprise, an attempted revival of the golden age of the Negro leagues in the 1920s.  With the collapse of Rube Foster’s NNL and the Eastern Colored League, black teams in the 1930s turned more and more to barnstorming, and instead of building their own parks they rented major and minor league venues.  Greenlee Field was not the first of its kind, but the last.  Its demolition in 1938 marked the end of a particular dream of black self-sufficiency, and served as a harbinger of the age of integration that was to follow.

1902 philadelphia giants

Here’s a photo of the 1902 Philadelphia Giants, the first edition of that soon-to-be great ballclub, from the October 5, 1902, Philadelphia Inquirer.  It was later printed in Sol White’s History of Colored Base Ball (1907), but without the players identified. Perhaps most importantly, that’s the veteran Frank Grant, second from left in the middle row.

You can click to enlarge the team photo, but in case the print is still too small, here are the players:

Top row, L to R: Farrell, 1B; John Nelson, 3B; Sol White, SS & captain; Kid Carter, P; Warrick, P.

Second row: W. Smith, CF; Frank Grant, 2B; H.W. Schlichter, manager; William Bell, P; Harry Smith, asst. manager; Andrew Payne, LF.

Front: Day, RF; Pete Burns, C.

Pete Burns, of course, is one of the people who blew the whistle on Charlie Grant’s attempt to pass as Indian.

 

mohawk park

Here’s another entry in the list of ballparks built especially for Negro league teams, joining Central Baseball Park and Greenlee Field (Pittsburgh), Giants Park and Stars Park (St. Louis), Lewis Park (Memphis), and Tate Field (Cleveland), among others. After playing a season at Island Park, a once and future semipro venue located on Van Slyck Island in the Mohawk River, the Schenectady Mohawk Giants were taken over in 1914 by a local businessman named Samuel R. Flansburgh. He determined to build the Mohawks their own park in Rotterdam, just beyond Schenectady’s southern boundary, at the end of the Broadway trolley line.

(Schenectady Gazette, March 25, 1914, p. 12)

Work was completed by the end of April, and Mohawk Park was opened on Saturday, May 2, by a game between the Mohawks and a new club, the New York Colored Giants. The Mohawks crushed them 17 to 0, and then followed up with a more restrained 10 to 2 victory on Sunday. Unfortunately this would be the last major black club to visit Schenectady in 1914, a marked contrast with 1913, which saw the Paterson Smart Set, New York Lincoln Giants, Philadelphia Giants, Brooklyn Royal Giants, and Cuban Giants of Buffalo all visit Island Park. Forced into a long road trip to find opponents, the Mohawks hemorrhaged money and finally fell apart in August.

(Schenectady Gazette, August 11, 1914, p. 7)

It turns out that the Mohawks’ troubles may have been caused by the Schenectady County sheriff, Louis A. Welch, who was determined to stop Sunday baseball at Mohawk Park. After the season Flansburgh actually sued Welch (unsuccessfully) for damaging his business.

(Schenectady Gazette, November 11, 1914, p. 12)

Flansburgh lost his lease on Mohawk Park the following year, but the ballpark continued to exist for a number of years, renamed Electric City Park, after the larger amusement complex on whose grounds it had been built.

john boyce taylor

A couple of further notes on Steel Arm Johnny Taylor, the second-oldest of the Taylor brothers, right-handed pitcher, Biddle University baseball coach, Louisville White Sox manager, and in 1920 the founder of a team called the American Black Devils based in Peoria, Illinois.

1)  He really was referred to in newspapers as “Steel Arm John” or “Steel Arm Johnny,” much more often than the simpler “Steel Arm Taylor,” which is why I elected to use that as his baseball name.

2) His name was John Boyce Taylor, not Jonathan, as you will see in some secondary sources.  He was always, without exception, called John or Johnny in newspapers; he was always John in census records; and he signed his name “John” on both his World War I and World War II draft cards.

By the way, C. I., John, Jim, and Ben were not the only Taylor brothers.  Here are all the (known) children of Isham and Adeline Taylor, with their birth years in parentheses:

Fran K. (1865)
Mary (1868)
Sarah J. (1870)
Frances (1873)
Charles Isham (1875)
Samuel (1877)
John Boyce (1879)
Martha (born February 1882)
James Allen (1884)
Pomp (1886)
Benjamin Harrison (1888)
Julian H. born (1889)

I wonder what it was like to be one of the kids who didn’t become a professional ballplayer…

which taylor brother is it?

Over at Seamheads.com last month I posted the following photo, which I identified as Ben Taylor:

You may have noticed that this player has been identified as Ben’s older brother Steel Arm Johnny Taylor in more than one source.  In fact, I originally used this very picture to illustrate John Taylor in the Negro Leagues DB.

It comes from this team photo of the 1912 New York Lincoln Giants:

This photo has been published several times, notably in Phil Dixon’s The Negro Baseball Leagues: A Photographic History (1992) and Dick Clark and Larry Lester’s The Negro Leagues Book (1994).  In both books the player is identified as Steel Arm Taylor, probably for a couple of reasons:

1) He has been labeled “Taylor P.”  John Taylor is the only one of the Taylor brothers now remembered as primarily a pitcher, so it makes sense this would be him.

2) There’s a report in the June 27, 1912, New York Age that the Lincolns  had signed “Steel Arm Taylor” of the previous year’s St. Louis Giants, and that he then pitched the Lincolns to a victory over the Pittsburgh Giants on June 23.

However, I’ve become quite certain that the Lincoln Giants’ “Taylor P” is really Ben.  Here's why:

1) It simply looks more like Ben Taylor, at least to me.  Here are a few photos of Ben from various sources:

Meanwhile here are a couple of solidly ID’d photos of Johnny Taylor:

2) His height is wrong for Johnny Taylor.  In the Lincoln Giants photo, he’s obviously taller than Spottswood Poles, who’s standing next to him, and comparable in height to Judy Gans.  On their World War II draft cards Poles is listed (generously, I’d say) at 5’9” and Gans is 5’11”.  John Boyce Taylor, meanwhile, is 5’5 ½”.  I don’t have a draft card for Ben, but a photo of the four Taylor brothers standing together printed in the Indianapolis Freeman in 1910 shows that John was clearly several inches shorter than Ben (and C. I.), and about the same height as Candy Jim Taylor (whose draft card has him at 5’5”). 

L to R: James Allen Taylor, John Boyce Taylor, Charles Isham Taylor, Benjamin Harrison Taylor

(Indianapolis Freeman, April 16, 1910)

In the following photo of the 1914 Indianapolis A.B.C.s, Steel Arm Johnny is standing on the far left, next to Dicta Johnson, who was 5’7” according to his draft card.  Ben, meanwhile, is standing next to Edgar Burch, who was 5’10”.

In this photo of the 1909 St. Paul Gophers (from Todd Peterson's great book Early Black Baseball in Minnesota, but originally published in the same issue of the Freeman as the Taylor brothers photo, in fact on the same page), Steel Arm Johnny is standing on the far left.



Also look back at the photo of the 1910 Chicago Giants I posted the other day--John Taylor is standing, third from left, clearly shorter than Walter Ball and Harry Moore and about the same height as Bobby Winston (5’6”).

3) It’s now largely forgotten that Ben was primarily known as a pitcher in 1912.  It probably wasn’t until he joined the A.B.C.s in 1914 that he definitively became known as a first baseman above all.

4) John Taylor was pitching for the West Baden Sprudels from late June to late August, the same time I have “Taylor” documented in Lincoln Giants box scores.  There’s no doubt about the identity of the Sprudels’ pitcher—he’s referred to several times as “Steel Arm,” or “J. B. Taylor,” or “Johnny Taylor.”  The New York Age claimed that “Steel Arm Taylor” pitched for the Lincoln Giants on June 23, 1912, but “J. B. Taylor” was the winning pitcher for the Sprudels in Indiana on June 30.  I suspect the Age simply mistook Ben for Steel Arm, or wrongly applied the nickname to Ben (both had pitched for St. Louis in 1911).

1910 chicago giants

Courtesy of Todd Peterson, here’s a photo I had never seen before of the 1910 Chicago Giants, from the Twin City Star, July 21, 1910.

Standing, L to R: Walter Ball, Harry Moore, Steel Arm Johnny Taylor, Frank Leland, Bobby Winston, Joe Green, Danger Talbert

Seated, L to R: Nate Harris, Chappie Johnson, Bill Pettus, Cyclone Joe Williams, and Felix Wallace.

1909 kansas city giants

From Patrick Rock, here’s a photo of the 1909 Kansas City (Kansas) Giants, a team that beat the mighty Leland Giants of Chicago two games out of three.  Notable players appearing in this photo include Bill “Shin” Norman (whose real name was Arthur Hardy), Tullie McAdoo, Topeka Jack Johnson, and Bill Pettus.

jack hannibal, arthur coleman, mckinley brewer

This might be among the least-noticed of my work at the Seamheads Negro Leagues Database, but I’m personally very happy about being able to identify some minor Indianapolis players from the 1910s.

1) Jack Hannibal was a middleweight boxer who moonlighted as a professional baseball and football player in the 1910s and 1920s.  As I tried to track him down in official records, it soon became clear that “Jack Hannibal” was a boxing pseudonym.  Eventually it turned out that his real name was Porter Lee Floyd.  He was born in Campbellsville, Kentucky, in 1891, and moved to Indianapolis with his parents when he was five.  A high school track star, Floyd first entered the ring professionally in 1912, and he boxed, mostly locally, until 1928.  Supposedly out of 100 fights in his career he lost only five.  As a professional ballplayer he appeared intermittently in the outfield for local Indianapolis teams in the 1910s, appearing under four names: Porter, Lee, Floyd, and Hannibal.  Against the best black professional competition from 1913 to 1916, he batted 28 for 65 in 17 games, .431/.456/.600.  He continued to be active and popular on the local sports scene until his death in 1949 at the early age of 58.  According to the Indianapolis player and journalist Tiny Baldwin, Jack Hannibal was

“a quiet man, who always managed to talk at the right time, and only the right time.  Jack put each player on a high pedestal and made him feel he was on top of the world, and that way gave the players that little extra something which made each give his everything every time he strode onto the diamond.  His famous words were: ‘Every time I get out of Indianapolis, I like Indianapolis that much more’.” (Indianapolis Recorder, August 20, 1955, p. 11)

2)  It was previously thought that Clarence Coleman, a longtime catcher for the Union Giants and other barnstorming teams, also pitched for several Midwestern teams from about 1916 to 1921.  As I compiled stats for the late 1910s and early 1920s, it soon emerged that there must have been two Colemans active at the time: the catcher Clarence, who was a fairly well-known figure, and another Coleman who was a left-handed pitcher.  In 1920, for example, the southpaw Coleman pitched for the Dayton Marcos while Clarence Coleman was catching for the Union Giants.  Julius Culpepper observed the “big south paw” doing mound duty for the Marcos:

“A bird by the name of Coleman was put in to do the hurling…The chap had a strange kind of delivery, the like of which has never been before.  It fooled both the batter and the umpire as well for a while but at least it faded and did not last long” (Chicago Whip, July 24, 1920).

Coleman was only a marginal pitcher, and for a long time I assumed I would never found out anything else about him.  But I recently ran across this letter, printed in Tiny Baldwin’s “Passing Sportinalities” column in the Indianapolis Recorder:

“Mr. Tiney –
    I can’t place you but read your column every week.  Indianapolis is my native home – born on the Southside, raised on the Eastside.  Played with the Marion Ramblers from their start until they disbanded.  Played with Bowser’s or Jewell’s ABC’s after they split from C. I. Taylor, with such players as Todd Allen, Cat Francis, Puggie Hutchinson, George Board, Jack Hannibal, Blackwell, Rogers, Jack Watts and Joe ‘45’ Scotland.
     George Abram and Warner Jewell were managers.  I was a left-handed pitcher.  About Elvis Holland – he used to ask me about holding the ball.  It has been 40 years since I saw him.  He and Paige are about the same age.  I am 60 years old and Holland is younger than I.
     Yours truly –
     Arthur Coleman”
(Indianapolis Recorder, April 12, 1958, p. 14)

“Elvis Holland” is of course the great pitcher, and Indianapolis native, Bill Holland (full name Elvis William Holland), who was Arthur Coleman’s teammate on the 1919 Jewell’s A.B.C.s.

3) A player of a similar vintage, a pitcher/outfielder named Brewer, had been identified in some reference works as “Luther Brewer.”  I concluded that this was a mistake resulting from the omission of a comma in the summary section of a box score in a 1919 issue of the Indianapolis Freeman; Luther Farrell, who went by the name of Al Farrell early in his career, had pitched for the 1919 Jewell’s A.B.C.s alongside Brewer (and Arthur Coleman).  “Luther” and “Brewer” were listed side by side in the box score without a comma between them, and I think it’s possibility that a researcher thought this meant there was someone named “Luther Brewer,” rather than two different players.

Anyway, I was able to confirm this, again via a Tiny Baldwin article, this one from 1955 (see the bottom of the first column):

(Indianapolis Recorder, August 6, 1955, p. 11)

Brewer passed away on September 23, 1955, just six weeks after his words were published in the Recorder.

 

negro leagues database: update

Here’s a recap of the last couple of months at the Seamheads Negro Leagues DB, in case you haven’t been keeping track.  Since November we’ve added:

1) Patrick Rock’s 1923 Negro National League, including Turkey Stearnes’s rookie year, the Monarchs’ first pennant, and 39-year-old Candy Jim Taylor’s bizarre 20-homer season.

2) The little-known Cuban Summer League from 1904 to 1908, plus the Cuban Winter League,1902/03 & 1903/04, which covers quite a bit of great hitting by Julián Castillo and great pitching by Carlos Royer.

3) 1914 & 1915 independent black clubs, which pushes our Negro league coverage back to the dawn of C. I. Taylor’s tenure with the A.B.C.s, and includes some great seasons by his brother Ben Taylor, Cristóbal Torriente, and Dizzy Dismukes.

Plus we’ve made innumerable additions and improvements to the biographical record of players and managers.  This is just me, but I’m especially happy about tracking down some obscure Indianapolis players from the 1910s, such as Jack Hannibal, Arthur Coleman, and McKinley Brewer.   We’ve also gotten significant help from Brian McKenna, who has recently done a series of biographies of early black ballplayers such as Danger Talbert, Doc Sykes, Bingo DeMoss, and Tullie McAdoo.

There hasn’t been a huge amount of commentary about the contents of the Database yet, but Alex King at the Baseball Think Factory’s Hall of Merit has used DB figures to help with his analysis of Cannonball Dick Redding’s pitching and Cyclone Joe Williams’s hitting.

Coming next to the Negro Leagues DB: 1912 & 1913 Negro leagues and 1913/14 & 1914/1915 Cuban leagues.

Also: if anybody can help us get box scores in Atlantic City, Kansas City, or Chicago, it would be greatly appreciated (email me if you’re interested).