And now, for the real (and unfortunately, not very pretty) story of “Bill Mack”--who, as it turns out, was not really Bill Mack:
A recent email from Tony Kissel, co-author of a book about Wild Bill Setley, who umpired in Cuba in 1908/09, and about whom you’ll soon be hearing more, alerted me to Setley’s role in bringing four North American players to Cuba to play for Matanzas in the Cuban League that year. (Kind of interesting, isn’t it, that Setley helped to sign players for a league he umpired in?) Tony sent along an article from the Syracuse Herald (February 8, 1909), which identified the four players as: Mert Whitney (a first baseman for Buffalo and Toronto in the 1908 Eastern League), Chappy Charles (a Cardinals’ infielder), Biff Schlitzer (an A’s pitcher who was known from previous seasons for introducing the spitball to Cuba—his nickname was El Salivito), and Phillies’ 23-year-old ace George McQuillan, who went 23-17, 1.53, in the 1908 National League.
This improved on Jorge Figueredo’s Cuban Baseball, which only gets Biff Schlitzer right. The other guys are listed as P. Whitney, L. Charles, and…Bill Mack, a name that will be familiar to anyone who peruses the comments section here. This set off alarm bells. Mack, you may know from my compilation of the 1907 Cuban League season, was one of the most effective pitchers in the league that year.
So I went to La Lucha to check this out from the Cuban end. Sure enough, the English page (January 14, 1909) mentions “McQuillan, better known here as Mack” (emphasis mine), and says he “has been in Havana on two occasions.” “Mack” was in Cuba for the 1906/07 season, when he arrived to play for the “All-Americans,” a combination major/minor league all-star team, and stayed to pitch for Habana in the Cuban League; and the fall of 1907, when he arrived with a similar team of “All-Leaguers.” I haven’t checked thoroughly, but he was routinely referred to in box scores and articles simply as “Mack,” with no first initial (though initials were common in Cuban box scores at the time). His identification as cup-of-coffee major leaguer Bill Mack comes solely from Figueredo, as far as I know. Tellingly, González Echevarría refers to him as “George Mack” (p. 127), which I assume comes from some contemporary source (though he doesn’t name it).
Eric Enders, in his biography of George McQuillan in Deadball Stars of the National League, mentions his brief Cuban sojourn of 1908/09, but not his earlier stays on the island; so I’m not sure whether the full story of his Cuban career is generally known.
Here’s how “Mack”’s career now looks. McQuillan, after pitching extremely well in the 1907 Cuban League (4-2, 2.87 total run average), went on to a phenomenal (presumably late-season) call up to the Phillies the next summer, where he went 4-0, 0.66. Then in 1908, after another trip to Cuba, he established himself as ace of the Phillies (who were a pretty good team that year, 83-71 and fourth place). His third trip to Cuba would not turn out so well.
According to the Syracuse Herald:
When [the four players] landed in Cuba they signed contracts and were immediately ordered into a game. They asked for a few days to get into training, but as some big games had been booked this request was refused. They were assigned to Matanzas, a crack Cuban team. Schlitzer pitched three games on three successive days, and McQuillan twirled two games in three days. Their team won the first game and then struck a losing streak, dropping five out of six contests.
The two pitchers complained about their workload, and after a dispute Matanzas paid them $10 and the cost of their passage home, and released them. McQuillan returned to the Phillies for the 1909 season, but his ERA jumped a little (1.53 to 2.14) and his innings pitched dropped from 360 to 248. I haven’t researched this from the U.S. side, but La Lucha’s English page remarked on January 15, 1910, that “McQuillan of the Philadelphias thinks that his slump in pitching last summer was due to his trip to Cuba, although he played but little during that trip.” According to Enders, “Shortly after returning from Cuba, McQuillan came down with what the media called a case of jaundice, but which was probably a venereal disease contracted in Havana” (p. 203).
He recovered to a league-leading 1.60 ERA in 1911, though his innings pitched dropped to 152; moving to Cincinnati in 1911, McQuillan collapsed, with a 4.68 ERA in only 77 innings. According to Enders, by this time he was beset with alcoholism, financial troubles, and a rocky marriage. In 1910 he was diagnosed with syphilis.
After some time with Columbus of the American Association, he struggled back to the majors in 1913 as a journeyman for the Pirate and Phillies, at times putting up solid numbers (though nothing like his earlier self). A brief stint with Cleveland in 1918 ended his major league career, though he continued in the minors until 1924. Not a bad career, actually, for an alcoholic who had trouble keeping in shape; but still, a sad end for someone whose rare talent had once seen him classed with the likes of Rube Foster and José Muñoz.
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