“koke” alexander of the dayton marcos

A note on a little-known 1921 Negro National League player, the outfielder “Alexander,” listed in Riley as playing from 1918 to 1921 with the Dayton Marcos, Columbus Buckeyes, and Chicago Giants.  He’s never given a first name in any of the reference works, so far as I know.  This is from the Dayton Journal (June 14, 1920):

It’s nice to resurrect Alexander’s day in the sun, as well as his nickname (any ideas as to what it might mean?). (By the way, “Johnson” of the Marcos is, I believe, Wise Johnson.) UPDATE 8-26-2020 In fact it is William “ Big C” Johnson, according to a 1934 profile in an issue of the Colored Baseball & Sports Monthly, which says that “[i]n 1920 his first outside club was the Dayton Marcos.”

The above article was reprinted verbatim (without attribution) in the June 19, 1920, issue of the Chicago Defender, sans box score.  This illustrates one of the ways in which the major black weeklies (the Defender and the Pittsburgh Courier primarily, but also sometimes the Baltimore Afro-American, Philadelphia Tribune, and others) that tried to cover the Negro Leagues as a whole gathered material: they collected clippings from daily newspapers.  Very often box scores in the Defender are obviously copied from, say, the Detroit Free Press—and they are obviously copies, rather than box scores independently compiled or supplied by the same source, as typos and other mistakes are frequently preserved.  To conserve space, the Defender sometimes slimmed the box scores down, leaving out information.  In 1920, the Defender printed many fewer box scores of non-Chicago games than it usually did; thus all it took from the Dayton paper here was the game story.

Comments

[Alex Smith]

My best guess on the nickname is they picked him up from, or something to do with the local "Coca Colas."

The newspaper references them as "Kokes" quite often.
https://img.newspapers.com/img/img?id=391861317&width=700&height=1316&crop=244_3703_719_1604&rotation=0&brightness=0&contrast=0&invert=0&ts=1560541595&h=d5185efca492c397fd067c8903a6890f

[Alex Smith]

Great Stuff! I think you'll enjoy this Dayton clipping calling him the "Babe Ruth" of the Marcos https://i.imgur.com/6V3B5Xo.jpg