Who was the “Johnson” who played for the St. Louis Giants on July 4 and 5, 1920? There are three known possibilities:
Clark and Lester’s Negro Leagues Book has “Roy Johnson” at first base for St. Louis, and also at second base for Kansas City. Riley’s Biographical Encyclopedia fills him out a bit, calling him Roy “Bubbles” Johnson, and giving him a career that lasts until 1922:
A marginal player during the early ‘20s, he appeared briefly as a first baseman with the St. Louis Giants [1920] before joining the Kansas City Monarchs as a reserve second baseman [1920-22]. (p. 442)
Both sources also have a Ray Johnson playing outfield for St. Louis in 1923. (Both books, by the way, are probably drawing on the same research, whoever originally did it. They probably shouldn’t be considered independent sources.) Although the nickname makes you think there must be a real person behind what otherwise are mere entries in lists, that’s the only biographical detail we’re given. And there is something we do know, at least circumstantially, about the guy in St. Louis in early July: we have very good reason to believe that he was the same player who appeared in the 25th Infantry lineup on June 28--which would strongly imply he was, like Stewart and Herring, fresh from the Army. Perhaps Bubbles Johnson was a veteran. But, so far at least, I haven’t seen anything at all about him, other than the above.
There are, however, two Negro Leaguers with the name “Johnson” who are well-known as veterans of the 25th Infantry. One is William “Big C” or “Wise” Johnson. Phil Dixon, who knew him, suggested to me that Wise Johnson might be our man. Phil pointed out that he started his career with the Dayton Marcos not long after the games in question in St. Louis. Sure enough, Big C’s first league game with the Marcos was on July 11—in St. Louis, as a matter of fact, against Joe Green’s Chicago Giants. So Wise Johnson, veteran of the 25th Infantry, can be placed in St. Louis within just a few days of the 25th Infantry/St. Louis Giants game and the two games “Johnson” subsequently played for the Giants. Plus, during his Negro League career he was most frequently a catcher (matching Wyatt’s statement that the catcher was the best of the Army players), though he seems to have been mostly an outfielder for Dayton that year. Case closed?
Not quite. If we take Wyatt’s article seriously (which is kind of a contradiction, since we already know it isn’t exactly correct in what it says or implies about Rogan’s path to Chicago), three players came together to the St. Louis Giants fresh from the Army. And in the Chicago Defender a few months earlier (March 6, 1920), we find this small item:
Wise Johnson, the Big C, would seem to have already been out of the Army since at least March. When the Peoria Black Devils came to St. Louis in May, he appears to have been in the lineup (Globe-Democrat, May 19, 1920):
But still: perhaps Wise Johnson left Peoria and came to St. Louis, hoping to catch on with the Giants, and met up with his old Army buddies who were also in the city. Maybe he played in the June 28 game, even though he was no longer enlisted. The “25th Infantry” squad might have been more of a “pickup” team; after all, they did use a white pitcher. It’s possible. Also, at least two of his Peoria teammates were picked up by St. Louis that season (pitchers Wayne Carr and Joe Casey). (Meanwhile, yet another Johnson is playing the outfield for Peoria...)
Except that the Dayton Marcos were in Detroit on July 4 and 5—the very days “Johnson” played for St. Louis—taking the field against a pair of white semipro teams, the Alconas and the Cowpers. And on both days we find “Johnson” in right field. Here’s the box score for the second game (Detroit Free Press, July 6, 1920):
It would seem that the Big C was already with the Marcos before they set foot in St. Louis (where, by the way, he continued to bat seventh and play right field).
That leaves us with the other Negro Leaguer named Johnson known to have played baseball in the 25th Infantry: Oscar “Heavy” Johnson, who played for the 25th Infantry Wreckers since at least fall, 1915, in Hawaii, until spring, 1922, when he left the Army to join the Monarchs. Johnson frequently caught during his Army career, and with Kansas City he started out as a catcher (though he quickly moved to the outfield). In his first NNL season, Heavy tortured Negro League pitching with a .389/.438/.644 performance. Patrick Rock’s 1923 Negro National League Yearbook shows Heavy at .406/.462/.722 for that season, including a league-leading 20 home runs. Putting the two seasons together gives us:
Heavy Johnson 1922-1923
G: 158
AB: 582
H: 233
D: 51
T: 18
HR: 28
W: 52
SB: 26
AVE: .400
OBA: .453*
SLG: .694
(*-not including hit by pitch for 1923)
We can safely say he hit the ground running. If you read the Wyatt article the way I do, he’s saying that the catcher was the best of all the Army prospects, Rogan and Moore included. If he had in mind a guy capable of numbers like this, the statement begins to makes sense.
But what happened to him? If Heavy Johnson indeed played for the St. Louis Giants in 1920, why did his teammates Stewart and Herring (who hit nothing like this) continue on with the team, while he disappeared after two games (one of which he broke up with a late-inning, bases-loaded triple)? I’ll bring the story to a conclusion (of sorts) tomorrow.
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