agate type

rube vs. rube

“It was during this period [the early 1900s] that the nickname ‘Rube’ was attached to the young pitcher.  Legend has it that his teammates began calling him Rube after he defeated George E. (Rube) Waddell and the Philadelphia Athletics, 5-2, in a game in New York.”
    --Robert Peterson, Only the Ball Was White (1970), p. 107.

“By his own recollection, that’s the year [1902) he met and whipped the great Rube Waddell, who was 25-7 with the pennant-winning Athletics.  Other reports say the Waddell game was in 1903 or 1905.  No box score has yet been found.  However, since there was no Sunday baseball in those years, the Athletics were in the habit of playing exhibitions outside the city every Sunday, and it is not unlikely that they played Rube’s club on one or more of those occasions.”
    --John Holway, Blackball Stars (1988), p. 11.

“As a raw-talent rookie pitcher soon after the turn of the century, the big Texan was credited with 51 victories in 1902, including a win over the great Rube Waddell, the game in which Foster received his nickname.”
    --James Riley, The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues (1994), p. 290.

“One postseason contest against the Athletics saw Foster go head-to-head against Connie Mack’s star southpaw, Rube Waddell.  Foster won 5-2, and as a consequence, he later recalled, ‘they gave me the name of the colored Rube Waddell’.  News accounts, starting in 1905, first began referring to the Philadelphia Giants’ ace as Rube Foster.”
    --Robert Cottrell, The Best Pitcher in Baseball: The Life of Rube Foster, Negro League Giant (2001), p. 19.

 

Andrew Foster, it is said, acquired his nickname on the field of battle, defeating Rube Waddell and taking it from him in what sounds like some kind of ancient warrior ritual. As far as I can tell, nobody has identified the actual exhibition game against the Philadelphia Athletics, and accounts vary considerably about the year in which the legendary contest occurred, anywhere from 1902 to 1905.

I haven’t been able to find the game against the A’s either, though I wouldn’t rule it out (see Holway’s comment above).  The earliest example I’ve found of Foster himself telling the story of his nickname appears in an article by Frederick North Shorey in the September 14, 1907, issue of the Indianapolis Freeman.  Shorey quotes Foster saying, in part:

The order of the sentences kind of implies it took place in 1905, though I’d say it’s still more than a little ambiguous.  Phil Dixon doesn’t record any exhibition games between Waddell’s A’s and Foster’s Philadelphia Giants in his thorough account of the Giants’ 1905 season, though there are lots of blank spaces in October, and again, I wouldn’t rule it out. 

But Foster was called “Rube” before 1905.  The earliest example I’ve found so far is from the July 26, 1904, issue of the Trenton Evening Times, in a story about a game between the Philadelphia Giants and the Trenton YMCA:

So perhaps it took place earlier in 1904, or possibly in 1902 or 1903.  In 1902, Foster played for the Chicago Union Giants and a white semipro team in Otsego, Michigan; so far, I haven’t found any indication that either of these teams ever faced Rube Waddell, though my search has hardly been exhaustive.  In 1903 Foster joined the Cuban X Giants on the east coast.  I haven’t found them playing the Philadelphia A’s yet, but there is this, from July 28, 1903:

(New York Evening World, July 28, 1903, p. 8)

The Murray Hills were a fairly prominent Manhattan semipro team managed at the time by Nat Strong.  And the following Sunday (August 2) they did indeed meet the Cuban X Giants at Olympia Field (see below), with Foster on the mound for the Giants, vs. “Wilson” for the Murray Hills.

(New York Sun, August 3, 1903, p. 6)

It happens that Charles Dryden of the Philadelphia North American, one of the most famous baseball writers in the country, wrote up an account of this game.  I haven’t seen the original, but a passage from it was quoted a couple of days later in the Pittsburg Press:

(Pittsburg Press, August 5, 1903, p. 10)

The Philadelphia Athletics were in town to play the Highlanders, but at that time Sunday baseball was illegal in New York, so Waddell spent the enforced day off pitching as “Wilson” for the semipro Murray Hills in an illicit game (although results were still reported in some newspapers) against Andrew Foster of the Cuban X Giants.  Waddell struck out 12 but was dinged for 11 or 12 hits, while Foster scattered 7 hits and won, 6 to 3.  At one point Foster hit Waddell in the head, to the apparent entertainment of the crowd.  Later a foul tip from Waddell supposedly hit a fan and ignited a box of matches in his pocket, setting his clothes on fire.

On the top of that, this game appears to be the only documented instance of Foster pitching against Waddell.  Even though it was against the Murray Hills and not the Athletics, and the score was 6 to 3 and not 5 to 2, it seems to me quite possible that this was the game that led to Foster being forever after known as Rube.

Some closing notes:

• I still think it’s not unlikely that Foster was really called Rube because he was a new arrival in the North from rural Texas, and that the story that it came from his victory over Waddell is a case of retconning.

• You’d think that Nat Strong and the Murray Hills would have wanted it known widely that Waddell was pitching for them that Sunday.  This would be complicated by the blue laws, obviously, and by the fact that Connie Mack would probably have frowned on his star pitcher throwing nine innings on his off day.  So I’m wondering what kind of guerrilla marketing techniques Nat Strong used to evade detection by the authorities but still pull in a good crowd.

• The address given for Olympia Field (135th St. and Lenox Avenue) was only a long block away from the address later commonly given for Olympic Field (136th St. and Fifth Avenue), eventually the home of the New York Lincoln Giants.  I don’t know if they were really the same ballpark, or related in some way.

josé méndez in cleveland 1912

Here’s a cool photo of José Méndez I hadn’t seen before, from the August 20, 1912, Cleveland Plain Dealer.  Just another example of how famous Méndez was in the U.S. around that time, surely the best-known ballplayer from outside organized baseball.  Not sure what that round thing growing out of his back is supposed to be.

Incidentally, as the article tells us, the Tellings semipro team was trying to get University of Michigan star George Sisler to pitch against Méndez in the next game.  But the marquee matchup did not come off.  Sisler didn’t show up, and Méndez was “attacked with acute indigestion” just before game time and couldn’t play.  So instead it was Luis “Chicho” González who took the mound and disposed of the Tellings 3 to 1.

luis padrón & rule 52

More than a year and a half ago I reported on a couple of items from Cuban newspapers in 1909 claiming that Luis Padrón’s contract had actually been purchased by the Chicago White Sox when he tried out for them on July 22.  According to the pseudonymous correspondent “Bancroft,” who was supposedly reporting from Chicago, Comiskey paid Abel Linares and Tinti Molina $1000 for the rights to Padrón.  The player wasn’t supposed to report to the White Sox until mid-September. If true, this would mean not only that Padrón was twice the property of a major league club without being called up (the other team being the 1913 Boston Braves), but that he was the first Cuban League product to have been signed by the major leagues, predating Rafael Almeida and Armando Marsans by nearly two years (even if he never actually played).

At the time I actually thought this story sounded unlikely, in large part because I strongly doubted that a major league club would bother to pay a club outside organized baseball—especially one that employed black players and played on the blackball circuit—for a player.  There was, I supposed, the chance that Comiskey might have wanted to cultivate a relationship with Linares and Molina in the hopes of establishing a permanent pipeline of Cuban talent to the White Sox.  That would have been a pretty noteworthy development, considering that no Cuban League players had made it to the majors yet, so I was dubious. 

That was before I had heard of Rule 50, a clause added to the National Agreement in July 1909, right before Padrón’s tryout with the White Sox.  Here’s the account in Sporting Life (July 10, 1909):

It may be worth noting that sources in the U.S. reported (mistakenly, I had previously assumed) that Comiskey had actually signed Padrón, as in this note from Sporting Life (July 31, 1909):

So protection was extended to semiprofessional clubs, especially those in the Chicago area, in early July, 1909—and within a few weeks Luis Padrón of the Cuban Stars (who spent a large portion of their summer in Chicago) was reported to have been signed by the White Sox for a fee.  Coincidence?

There was also talk in early 1910 that the semipro Chicago City League would become formally a part of Organized Baseball.  Considering that the League had featured one black team for several years (the Leland Giants in 1908 and 1909, the Chicago Giants in 1910) this would have been quite a landmark.  The notion came to nothing, of course.  One assumes in any case that if the Chicago League had joined OB, the black teams would have been kicked out—as in fact they were after 1910 anyway.

Rule 50—which became Rule 52 in 1910—and its protection of semiprofessional contracts lasted for less than a year.  Francis Richter explains in Sporting Life (June 18, 1910)

NOTE: The image of the Luis Padrón baseball card, from the 1909 Cabañas set, can be found at Cubanball.com.

leland giants vs. cap anson

The man who famously refused to play against black players, mostly Fleet Walker, on multiple occasions in the 1880s, and has often been charged with a high degree of responsibility for the formation of baseball’s color line, ran a semipro team in Chicago in the 1900s that played against black teams quite frequently.  And he sometimes suited up with the team himself, well into his 50s. 

So, to answer the obvious question, yes, Cap Anson did play against African American teams.   Here is a box score for one such game, played on August 22, 1908, showing a 56-year-old Anson taking the field against Walter Ball, Pete Hill, Harry Moore, and the rest of the Leland Giants:

How did baseball’s most notorious racist before Ty Cobb come to swallow his objections to racially-integrated baseball?  Who knows, since to my knowledge he never said anything about it himself—but I’d guess four possible reasons:

1. He changed his views, or at least mellowed a bit with age;
2. He didn’t think it was such a big deal away from the major leagues;
3. As proprietor of a semipro club, he realized that games with black clubs were his biggest draw, largely because they were by far the most talented opponents the semipros could book on a regular basis;
4. He thought that his own appearance against black clubs would attract fans who were aware of his reputation, and might have expected something crazy to happen.

It’s likely some combination of these factors, with number 3 probably the most important, in my opinion.

And of course there is this photograph.  I don’t actually know the story behind this (if there is one). 

This picture, by the way, is one piece of evidence (among many) that Rube Foster wasn’t six feet tall (see comments on this post).  Anson was supposed to be six feet tall himself, and he’s clearly taller than Foster here.  Unless Anson was standing on something (I don’t think I’ve seen a larger version of the photo) or his commonly listed height was wrong and he was really 6’3” or 6’4” or something, Foster was, on the evidence of this photo, probably a few inches under six feet.  More on this in a future post.

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).

leland giants, 1905

If you haven’t already, check out the baseball books available at the Internet Archive.  In the 1900s and 1910s Spalding published a number of guides for local city baseball scenes, and the Internet Archive has volumes for Denver, Cleveland, Chicago, and New York. 

In particular, the 1905 Chicago Amateur Base Ball Annual and Inter-City Baseball Association Year Book is a treasure trove for anyone interested in semi-pro and independent professional baseball in that era.  There are team photographs of well-known semi-pro clubs like the West Ends, Gunthers, Spaldings, and All-Chicagos.  And, right in the middle of all these white teams, there is this photo of the 1905 Leland Giants:

thome family history

Check out this latest find by Scott Simkus—a box score showing Jim Thome’s grandfather Chuck, playing for the Peoria All-Stars, homering against the Kansas City Monarchs in 1936.

the henriquez brothers

Louis Castro was not the only early twentieth-century baseball figure with Colombian origins.  The Long Branch Cubans, who played in minor leagues and independently from 1913 to 1916, were owned by a New York physician named Carlos Louis Henriquez, and managed by his brother, Richard Anthony Henriquez (pictured right), also the team’s first baseman in 1913 and 1914.  

Aside from Long Branch, the Cubans also based themselves at various times in Newark, Jersey City, Poughkeepsie, Harlem, and Newton, New Jersey.  Especially when they were in Long Branch, a seaside resort town, they played a large number of exhibitions against major league teams, according to David Skinner compiling a record of 10-24 in these games.  Most significantly, they helped funnel a number of players, including Adolfo Luque and Mike González, from the Cuban League to U.S. organized baseball.

Although the Henriquez brothers were usually assumed to be Cuban themselves, a number of records show a Colombian connection.  In June 1886, about ten months after “Master Louis Castro” and his father Néstor arrived in New York, another family arrived on board the S.S. Niagara from Colombia (via Mexico and Cuba):

The family remained in the United States, appearing in the 1900 census, where the father, Louis N. Henriquez, and children are all born in the “U.S. of Columbia”; the children’s mother, who had passed away by now (Louis is widowed) is shown as born in Cuba.

In the 1910 census the brothers, both married now, are living together on W. 88th Street, the same address later given on some passenger lists by Long Branch Cubans players.  Both give Colombia as their birthplace.

They filled out draft cards in 1918, only two years removed from the demise of the Long Branch Cubans.  Unfortunately their cards did not ask for birth place.  Both checked the space under “Citizen by Father’s Naturalization before Registrant’s Majority,” although Richard seems to have also written, below that, that he is a citizen of Colombia.

Both appeared in the 1920 census, Carlos as “Dr. Carl Henriquez,” listed for the first time as born in Cuba (his parents in South America).  Richard’s census entry, on the other hand, is consistent with earlier records, showing born in South America, his father in South America and mother in Cuba).  Both of Richard’s sons, one ten years old, the other “6 2/12” (to my eyes; Ancestry.com has recorded his age as 2 9/12), are listed as born in New Jersey.

The last sign of either brother I’ve found so far is Carlos in the 1930 census, living with in Yonkers, listing his employment as “none,” and supposedly born in New York.  The names of his wife (“Jeannette”), son (“Carlo” or “Carlos”) and his mother-in-law, Cora Long, establish this as Carlos Henriquez. His name, however, is oddly given as “Henry Carlos Henriquez,” a strong indication that the information here is probably not entirely trustworthy.

The image of Richard Henriquez above is courtesy of David Skinner, but don’t blame him for the poor quality; I lifted it from a photocopied handout for his presentation on the L.B. Cubans.

semipro stats

Scott Simkus has posted some fascinating data from his vast collection of box scores for exhibition games pitting Negro Leaguers and major leaguers against semipro teams.  Definitely check out all three posts, as well as the comments.

UPDATE 12:50 p.m.  Scott has added a post on the records of different semipro teams vs. major league and Negro League teams.  The Brooklyn Bushwicks come out on top, at 58-60.  The 1921 Tesreau Bears, who were 21-15 against Negro League teams, were probably somewhere close to that level.  And the Long Branch Cubans, who played both Negro Leaguers and major leaguers extensively, would be interesting to throw into the mix.

the metropolitan semi-professional baseball association (brooklyn, 1920)

I’ve written before on the prominence of semipro (or independent professional) baseball in the 1910s and 1920s, especially in the big cities.  A number of leagues or umbrella organizations were formed around this time, including the Chicago City League (which actually dated back to the 1890s) and the Philadelphia Baseball Association.  Recently I ran across an article (in the June 8, 1920, Brooklyn Eagle) about a league in Brooklyn organized by Nat Strong (longtime owner of the Bushwicks and Brooklyn Royal Giants). 

What’s striking is that the league is framed as a response to the emerging problem of players jumping contracts.  The market for baseball beyond what was offered by the major leagues—specifically in big cities, beyond the reach of the minors--was booming, and these teams, which often featured former or future major leaguers (such as Jeff Tesreau, Nixey Callahan, and Manuel Cueto) were of a much higher caliber than we usually associate with the term “semipro.”