Agate Type

forgotten negro leaguer #1: moses l. herring

This is the first entry in a new category called “Forgotten Negro Leaguers,” about players who appear sketchily or incorrectly in the usual reference works (say, with only a last name, or with the wrong first name), who have been mistaken for or conflated with other players, or who don’t appear at all in any guise.

For the first entry it seemed appropriate to choose Moses L. Herring, the 25th Infantry sergeant and athlete I identified here as the “Herring” who played third base for the 1920 St. Louis Giants.  The case, I should note, is still circumstantial, in that I haven’t found any positive statements in the contemporary press that give Herring of the Giants a first name or identify him as an Army ballplayer.  But it is nevertheless a powerful case, at least in my opinion.  Herring, it appears, passed up a chance at the Olympic trials in 1920 (his event was the running hop, step, and jump) to play baseball in the Negro National League.

Unfortunately Herring was not a brilliant ballplayer.  He appeared in 16 of the St. Louis Giants’ 60 games against NNL opposition in 1920, batting .171/.237/.229 in 41 plate appearances, with a single extra-base hit (a triple), two walks, and two stolen bases.  He played 15 games (103 innings) at third base, fielding at an .850 clip and compiling a range factor of 2.97 (corresponding figures for all the Giants’ third basemen were .919 and 3.44).  He appeared once as a pinch-runner.  1920 would be Herring’s first and last season with a top-flight Negro League team, and may have been his last in professional baseball at any level.

Courtesy of Kevin Johnson, I now have Herring’s record from the Missouri State Archives Soldiers Database:

Name: Herring, Moses L.
Residence: St. Louis, Missouri
Inducted at: Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis, Missouri, on July 12, 1915
Place of birth: Abbeyville, South Carolina [probably Abbeville]
Age at induction: 21 5/6 years [putting his birth in August or September, 1894]
Served in: Company E, 25th Infantry
Promoted to sergeant: February 1919
Honorably discharged: (no date)
(The missing discharge date is unfortunate, as it could more definitively establish Moses Herring as the ballplayer.)

In the 1930 census, there is a “Mose Herring,” 35, working as the manager of a dance hall in St. Louis; he is listed as a World War I veteran.  He is, however, listed as born in Missouri, though it should be noted that he was boarding in someone’s house, and it’s quite possible that whoever was interviewed by the enumerator didn’t know where he had been born.

Lastly, here is his record in the U.S. Veterans Gravesites database:

Name: Moses L. Herring
Service Info: Sgt U.S. Army World War I
Death Date: 12 January 1931
Cemetery: Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery, St. Louis, Missouri

foster and méndez, 1924 world series

Regarding the decisive Game 10 of the 1924 World Series, in which the Monarchs’ 37-year-old player-manager José Méndez made a surprise start and shut out Hilldale on three hits despite suffering from a “viral infection” (Larry Lester, Baseball’s First Colored World Series, p. 175), John Holway wrote the following:

In the final game the Monarch manager, 38-year-old Jose Mendez, one of Cuba’s greatest pitchers 15 years earlier, had no one left to start on the mound.  “Well, Darling,” Foster smiled, “how do you feel yourself?”  Mendez gulped.  “If you say so,” he said, “I do it.”  Foster called every pitch for him from the bench and Mendez hurled a three-hitter to beat young Holsey “Scrip” Lee 5-0, and take the series. (Blackball Stars, p. 32)

I’d always thought this story sounded somewhat unlikely, given that Méndez was himself the veteran of many big games and hardly seemed the type to “gulp” at the prospect of a high-pressure situation.  I suspected (though of course without knowing for sure) that it emanated from Foster himself.  I haven’t checked every contemporary newspaper thoroughly to see if this story, or some hint of it, made it into print at the time.  But I did just run across this passage in the Philadelphia Tribune (November 22, 1924), from an article entitled “‘Rube’ Foster Comments on the World’s Series”:

So Foster himself didn’t claim it was his idea for Méndez to start, nor did he claim to have called pitches the whole game.  And I’m pretty sure that, had those things really happened, Foster would not have hesitated to take credit for them.

It’s entirely possible that there’s some truth to it: maybe, for instance, Méndez consulted Foster about how to pitch to certain Hilldale hitters.  This, of course, is hardly the same thing that the original story claims.  Plus it’s not clear that Foster would have known the Hilldale lineup all that much better than Méndez; two of the starting lineup that day had been teammates of Méndez’s recently (George Carr with the Monarchs, 1920-1922, and Frank Warfield with Santa Clara in the previous winter’s Cuban League).  Warfield, Clint Thomas, and Biz Mackey had all played in the NNL for multiple seasons fairly recently, so Méndez would have had as much chance to see them as Foster.  Maybe Foster would have known more about his fellow Texans Louis Santop and George Johnson.  On the whole though, the notion that Foster babysat Méndez through the Series-clinching victory is probably exaggerated.

oscar johnson addendum

David Skinner let me know that researchers have found another possible death date for Heavy Johnson: March 13, 1962, again in Cleveland.  I checked this out, and found this record, in the U.S. Veterans’ Gravesites database:

Name: Oscar Johnson
Born: November 5, 1896
Died: March 13, 1962
Service Start Date: September 17, 1917
Buried in: Beverly National Cemetery, Beverly, New Jersey

The birthdate, of course, is similar to the birthdate found in the SSDI (November 2, 1896), though there it is coupled with a completely different death date (January 1964).  The service start date, September 17, 1917, is well after Heavy Johnson is known to have served in the 25th Infantry in Hawaii (beginning at least in October, 1915), and conflicts with the service record I found that puts his enlistment on December 10, 1913.  And finally, this Oscar Johnson is buried in New Jersey.  If Heavy Johnson passed away in Cleveland, it seems unlikely that he would have been shipped to New Jersey for burial (there certainly would have been more convenient national cemeteries); in addition, Heavy Johnson has no known connection to New Jersey.

It turns out that a World War I draft card exists for an Oscar Johnson born on November 5, 1896 (Heavy Johnson, of course, would not have had to register for the draft):

He was from Philadelphia, his father was a Swedish immigrant, and his race is recorded as white.

will the real oscar johnson please stand up?

Heavy Johnson’s current “official” dates, as found in Riley’s Biographical Encyclopedia (2001 addendum p. 939), are: born November 2, 1896, Atchison, Kansas; died January 1964, Cleveland, Ohio.  There are two reasons for thinking that these might be mistaken:

1) The Social Security Death Index (SSDI) has an Oscar Johnson who fits these dates perfectly (born November 2, 1896; died January 1964), plus his Social Security Number was issued in Ohio before 1951.  Of the seven Oscar Johnsons listed in the SSDI who died in January 1964, this is the only one who comes anywhere close to the information  Riley gives for Heavy Johnson. 

When looking, however, at the “Ohio Deaths” database at Ancestry.com, the only fit is an Oscar Johnson, “non-white,” aged 67 (thus born in 1896 or 1897), who died on January 12, 1964—in Cincinnati, not Cleveland. (Let me emphasize that he’s the only Oscar Johnson listed in this database to have died in the state of Ohio in January 1964.)

Oscar “Heavy” Johnson, the baseball player, would not have filled out a World War I draft card, because he was already in the Army, where he served from at least October 1915 until spring 1922, when he joined the Monarchs.  However: I did find a draft card for an African-American named Oscar Johnson born on November 2, 1897—in Cincinnati, Ohio.  And one of the things we definitely know about Heavy Johnson is that he hailed from Atchison, Kansas.

This means that we can make a strong link between the Oscar Johnson of the SSDI and an Oscar Johnson who was born in Cincinnati.  There is a one-year discrepancy in the birth date (1896 in SSDI, 1897 on the WWI draft card), but that’s pretty common in such records.  In order for us to believe Heavy Johnson’s dates in Riley, we’d have to believe that there existed two black men named Oscar Johnson who had the same birthday (November 2, either in 1896 or 1897) and who died in the same month (January 1964) in the same state (Ohio), but that somehow they don’t coexist in either the SSDI or Ohio Deaths database.  It is certainly possible, but you can see that it’s a little unlikely.

2) The second reason for doubting the dates given for Heavy Johnson is that the birthdate, November 2, 1896, does not square with the 1895 Kansas State Census, which was, presumably, taken in 1895, and includes Oscar, aged two months, living with his family in Atchison.  The 1900 and 1905 records obviously show the same family, with the ages more or less consistent throughout (allowing for the small variations typical in these kinds of records).  The 1900 census shows a birth date of April, 1895, for Oscar.  The 1905 Kansas State Census shows Oscar aged 10.  As I’ve said before, this is the only African-American named Oscar Johnson shown living in Atchison over these three censuses.  Again, while it’s possible that there were two black Oscar Johnsons in Atchison over this time, only one of which shows up in the records, the likelier explanation is that Heavy Johnson is indeed this Oscar, and that he was born well before November 2, 1896. (Images from these census records were posted yesterday.)

I have three other records to throw into the mix here.  The first is the 1920 census, which shows a black man named Oscar Johnson assigned to Camp Stephen D. Little in Nogales, Arizona, aged 28, born in Kansas, with both parents born in Virginia (the birth states match the Atchison Oscar Johnson).

The second is a World War II draft card for an Oscar Johnson living in Ohio, who was born on April 20, 1892, in Atchison, Kansas:

And the third is this, from Ohio Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines, World War, 1917-18, p. 8543 (digitized by Ancestry.com):

To translate:
Name: Oscar Johnson
Race: Colored
Residence: Youngstown, Ohio
Enlistment Divison: Regular Army
Enlistment Location: Columbus Barracks, Ohio
Enlistment Date: 10 December 1913
Birth Place: Atchison, Kansas
Age at Enlistment: 21 7/12 years [meaning born in April or May, 1892]
Assigned to Company K, 25th Infantry until discharge
Promoted to PFC: 1 March 1917
Demoted to Private: 1 November 1917
Promoted to PFC: 9 July 1918
Honorable Discharge: 30 March 1919

Again, unless there were two Oscar Johnsons from Atchison, Kansas, who served simultaneously in the 25th Infantry, one of whom doesn’t show up in any records, these three records all refer to the same man, and he’s the baseball player, Heavy Johnson.  The 1892 birth year instead of 1895 is probably the result of Johnson lying about his age to get in the military, just as Bullet Rogan and Oscar Charleston did.  (And Rollo Wilson, btw, seems to be wrong on the small detail that Johnson left Atchison directly to enlist in the Army.)

Note also that Oscar Johnson was living in Youngstown when he enlisted.  This provides some strong evidence that Benjiman Harrison Johnson (born in Atchison, living in Youngstown), whose draft card I posted yesterday, was in fact Oscar Johnson’s brother Harrison.

So, although there are certainly some loose ends left, a likely interpretation of Oscar Johnson’s early life, as found in these records, would go something like this: he was born in Atchison, probably on April 20, 1895 (or thereabouts); sometime after 1905, he, his brother, and their father (as noted on Harrison’s draft card), and perhaps others in their family, moved to Youngstown, Ohio, where, in 1913, Oscar added three years to his age in order to enlist in the Army. He then used this false birth date for the rest of his life (just as Rogan did).  He was honorably discharged from the Army in March 1919, but had reenlisted by January 1920, when he appears in the census at Camp Stephen D. Little in Arizona.  He may have played two games for the St. Louis Giants during a brief break from the Army in July 1920; he definitely left the service for good when he joined the Monarchs in 1922.  His last stops in the major Negro Leagues were Cleveland (in 1928) and Memphis (off and on from 1928 to 1933, with a detour to the Dayton Marcos in 1931); by 1942 he was back in Cleveland, not far from Youngstown, where his family, or part of it, had lived in the 1910s (and perhaps still did).

Unfortunately, we’re left (once again) not knowing when or where Heavy Johnson died—though it would seem that Riley had independent information that he passed away in Cleveland, probably in the 1960s (the original edition gave his death as 1966 in Cleveland).

UPDATE 7:47 p.m.  ...though I should add that there is an Oscar Johnson,“non-white,” in the “Ohio Deaths” DB who died in Cleveland on October 9, 1960, aged 68 (consistent with the April 1892 birthdate Heavy Johnson seems to have used).  There is, of course, no direct proof that this is Heavy Johnson, but it does match the general thrust of the records presented here.

he ain’t heavy, he’s my brother

I’m starting a new category called “Unsolved Mysteries,” which will include interesting but unresolved research questions (or half-baked research, if you prefer)*.  The following is from the same Rollo Wilson column that provided the José Méndez bit the other day (Pittsburgh Courier, October 11, 1924):

I don’t think anybody’s ever put anything in print about Oscar “Heavy” Johnson’s having a ballplaying brother.  According to Wilson, Heavy’s brother played for both the Indianapolis ABCs and the Dayton Marcos, but I don’t have any leads there—Louis “Dicta” Johnson and Tom Johnson, both well-known players who weren’t related to Heavy Johnson and whose biographies don’t fit Wilson’s description above, were the only men with that last name to play for C. I. Taylor’s ABCs.  William “Big C” or “Wise” Johnson played for the Marcos in 1920; but that team existed at least from 1917 through 1926, and I don’t have rosters for most of those years.

Working the Atchison, Kansas, angle, I found Oscar Johnson’s family in the 1900 U.S. Census and the 1895 and 1905 Kansas State Census.  They’re easy to find: there were at least three black Oscar Johnsons born in Kansas of roughly Heavy Johnson’s age, but only one can be connected to Atchison.  Here they are in the 1895 Kansas State Census, living in Atchison:

And in the 1900 United States Census, again in Atchison:

The parents, Frank and Harriet, were born in Virginia before the Civil War, almost certainly as slaves.  Their first few children were born in Virginia as well; going by the census data here, they must have moved to Kansas sometime between the birth of Cynthia (November 1883) and Harrison (March 1888).

And in the 1905 Kansas State Census, still living in Atchison:

Their states of birth were on the following page, which I’m not reproducing here, but they match the information in the earlier records, with the parents and older children born in Virginia, the younger children (including Oscar) born in Kansas.

So Oscar’s brothers were named, in order of age: James, Edward, John, Frank Jr., Harrison, and Samuel.

According to the 1900 census, Oscar’s mother had by then borne 11 children, with 9 surviving.  In 1900, six were living with them: Matilda, Cynthia, Harrison, Samuel, Beulah, and Oscar.  Three of the older siblings reappear in the 1905 census (James, Edward, and Frank Jr.), which completes the nine children living in 1900.  If these numbers are accurate, then Oscar’s older brother John, listed as 16 back in 1895, seems to have passed away by 1900, as did another child, unnamed in any of these records.  And by 1905, two other children, Samuel and Beulah, are not living with the family.

Unfortunately, most of these names—James Johnson, Edward Johnson, John Johnson, Frank Johnson Jr.—are extremely common and hard to trace.  But I have found a World War I draft card for a Benjiman [sic] Harrison Johnson, born in Atchison, Kansas, on March 10, 1889 (the same month, though one year off from the birthdate for Oscar’s brother Harrison given in the 1900 census), and living in Youngstown, Ohio:

I have no way of knowing whether or not this guy was a ballplayer.  But I do have one more reason, aside from the name and Atchison connection, for thinking he’s Oscar “Heavy” Johnson’s brother—which I’ll talk about in another entry, this one on Heavy himself, tomorrow.

P.S.  The title of this post came from the Hollies’ song; but, if you believe Wikipedia, the phrase itself may have originated as the title of an article published in Kiwanis Magazine in September, 1924—only a month before the Rollo Wilson column with the anecdote about Heavy’s brother.

*-Eh, what the heck—I’ll just call it “Half-Baked Research.”

goro mikami

The first Japanese to play baseball professionally in the United States had to register for the draft, too:

In August 1916 he was with an All-Nations team in the New York/New Jersey area; by June 1917 he was permanently based in Paterson, working as an importer.

donlin vs. méndez

Here’s a note from W. Rollo Wilson’s “Eastern Snapshots” column in the Pittsburgh Courier (October 11, 1924), writing on José Méndez, manager of the Kansas City Monarchs, just before the World Series vs. Hilldale:

I thought I’d check to see how Mike Donlin fared against Méndez in Cuba.  Turns out he only faced him there once, during the Giants’ visit in 1911.

On November 30, 1911, in the second Almendares/Giants game, came the big matchup everyone was waiting for:  Méndez vs. Christy Mathewson.  Mathewson came out on top, 4 to 0.  In the first inning, Donlin was safe on a fielder’s choice and scored when Beals Becker tripled.  In the third Donlin grounded out to Méndez.  In the sixth inning, Gene Paulette hit for Donlin, the only substitution made by the Giants in the game.

On December 10, Méndez lost an 11-inning game to Otis Crandall, 6 to 3.  Donlin stayed in the whole game and hit 2 for 6 (both singles), but struck out three times.

On December 14, Méndez replaced Pedroso in the sixth inning with Almendares leading 5 to 3, the bases loaded (including Donlin on first), and nobody out.  Méndez gave up a sac fly to Beals Becker, scoring Buck Herzog.  Fletcher grounded to third baseman Rafael Almeida, who forced Donlin at second, then Gervasio González gunned down Fletcher trying to steal—and Méndez was out of the inning.  He coasted through the last three innings, allowing a single hit (to Larry Doyle), and Almendares won comfortably, 7 to 4.  Donlin only faced Méndez once, popping to the shortstop in the eighth.  Altogether, Méndez faced the miminum twelve batters in the four innings he pitched.  And, by the way, Christy Mathewson went the whole way on the other side, so Méndez did actually pitch four strong innings in a winning effort against Mathewson.

On December 18, Méndez lost to the Giants for the third time.  He pitched eight innings, giving way to Pedroso in the ninth with the score 3 to 1, Giants.  Unfortunately, I don’t have a play-by-play account of this game.  The Giants scored one run in the ninth; the description of the scoring begins with Becker, who batted after Donlin, and it seems very likely Becker was the first batter in the inning.  That would mean all of Donlin’s plate appearances were against Méndez—and he went 0 for 4.

Overall, Donlin hit 2 for 13 against José Méndez in the 1911 series (or possibly 2 for 12, if he came to bat once against Pedroso in the last game)—either .154 or .167, with no walks or extra base hits, and at least three strikeouts.  Of course, Donlin probably faced Méndez in exhibition games in the United States, possibly a number of times (I haven’t checked).  Maybe Méndez was referring to one of those games.  But the fact remains that Donlin hit poorly against him in Cuba, and was lifted for a pinch-hitter in his first appearance.

UPDATE 8:28 p.m.  I forgot to mention that overall Donlin hit .333/.367/.422 (series averages .224/.283/.303), 15 for 45 with 2 triples and a team-leading 8 RBI.  He was the second-best hitter on the Giants, behind only Art Wilson (.382/.425/.471).  So he did have a specific problem with Méndez in this series.

editorial

From the Pittsburgh Courier, October 11, 1924:

1907 cuban summer league

Here are statistics for the 1907 Premio de Verano (Cuban Summer League), played from July through early October. 

Download 1907_cuban_summer_league.xls

This version of the summer competition featured more stars than usual, including some of the top pitchers (notably Luis González and Andrés Ortega, both regulars during the previous winter season, plus Carlos Royer).  It was, however, not as tightly organized as usual, consisting of three separate competitions.  First, a three-team league featuring “Almendarista,” “Habanista,” and Columbia (a new team organized by Alberto Azoy) ended prematurely when Columbia fell apart.  Habanista ended with the best record (3-1). 

Azoy then reorganized the old San Francisco club and played a twelve-game series with Almendarista, the two teams splitting 6 to 6.  This was followed by an Azul/Rojo series, Azul winning five games to two, with one tie.

The three series totaled 25 games; I have been able to find box scores for 24 (the exception being an 11-8 win by Rojo over Azul on October 4).  After the standings tab, the next three tabs give batting, fielding, and pitching totals for each individual player (their totals for all three series); then three more tabs divide up the stats by series and team, if you want that kind of detail.

If you haven’t seen them, I’ve also compiled statistics for the 1904, 1905, and 1906 Cuban summer championships.

UPDATE 11:20 p.m.  One small correction: Simón Valdés played 20 games at second base and none at third base.

luis castro & chick pedroes

Check out this issue of the newsletter for SABR’s Latino baseball committee, particularly Peter Bjarkman’s piece on the demise, after 69 years, of the Puerto Rican Winter League, and Leonte Landino’s article on Luis Castro, the (probably) Colombian-born second baseman who was given the thankless task of replacing Nap Lajoie on the 1902 Philadelphia A’s.  Leonte has also reproduced an article on Castro from the Smithsonian magazine on his blog, and Peter Bjarkman’s blog has a pair of entries on Castro and Charles “Chick” Pedroes (or Pedro), a Cuban-born American who played in two games for the 1902 Cubs.  There is also a website devoted to Castro.  I think Bjarkman is right that these two players, both of whom emigrated to the United States as children and certainly learned their baseball there rather than in Colombia or Cuba, are far less important figures in the history of Latin American-U.S. baseball than, say, Rafael Almeida or Armando Marsans (or Luis Padrón or Esteban Béllan, for that matter); but this is interesting stuff, nevertheless.