Agate Type

irvin woodberry brooks

Check out the comments to the entry on Irvin Brooks, where Brooks’s great-great-niece (if that’s the correct term; that is, the great-granddaughter of his sister) has written in to tell us what she knows of him.  I thought I’d go ahead and post what other information I have relating to him.

Here is his draft card from 1942:

This is his record in the U.S. Veterans’ Gravesites database:

Irvin Woodberry Brooks
Born 5 June 1891
Served in the U.S. Navy starting 19 October 1913
Died 4 February 1966
Buried Long Island National Cemetery.

I still need to dig up the article “Irving” Brooks wrote about the Royal Giants for the Baltimore Afro-American in 1924; I should be able to post it in the next couple of days.

carlos morán: southpaw third baseman

I wanted to pull this from the comments: Brent Moulton has finally found a contemporary reference to Carlos Morán throwing left-handed—hiding in plain sight, in the New York Times of all places!  Here’s what Brent says:

While looking for something else, I finally ran across a reference to Morán throwing left handed in this article from The New York Times, December 18, 1910, about the Detroit Tigers series that had just concluded. The article was written by Hall-of-Fame umpire Billy Evans and was one of a series of articles published by the Times that winter about baseball in Cuba. (To read other articles in the series, go the nytimes.com site and type in the Search box: “billy evans” cuba baseball; then select NYT Archive 1851-1980.) This article also includes an interesting description of Julián Castillo as the Cecil Fielder of the deadball era. It would be interesting to see a contemporary photo of him; there's no way that he weighed 260-285 pounds when the picture was taken that appears on page 85 of Figueredo.

Another question -- both the Times article and the photo above use the name “Sam Lloyd” for John H. Lloyd - does anyone know what that's about?

A couple of comments:

1) This is the famous series where Lloyd (.500, 11 for 22), Grant Johnson (.412, 7 for 17—with 7 walks), and Bruce Petway (.389, 7 for 18) all outhit Sam Crawford (.360, 18 for 50) and Ty Cobb (.350, 7 for 20; Cobb was reported at 7 for 19, .368, but I’m pretty sure that’s wrong).  (Carlos Morán, by the way, hit 8 for 24 with three walks in six games.)  It’s also the series in which Petway was supposed to have thrown out Cobb stealing anywhere from three to seven straight times, whereupon Cobb supposedly swore never to step on a diamond with black players again. 

I’ve only been able to document Petway throwing out Cobb once in the series, on his only known stolen base attempt in Cuba.  Cobb played only five games total, two against Petway’s Habana team.  For one of them, a 3-0 Habana win on November 28, I have a play by play account; in this one Petway nailed Cobb trying to steal second in the fourth inning.  For Cobb’s other appearance against Habana, a 12 to 4 Detroit win on December 4, I have no play-by-play.  Cobb came to the plate five times, going 2 for 5 with three runs scored.  I suppose it’s possible that Cobb made it on base all five times (with errors, fielders’ choices, etc.), but he couldn’t have been thrown out stealing more than twice, since he scored three times.  Petway does have two assists. It seems a little unlikely, though; since they made such a big deal out of Méndez fanning Cobb once, you’d think there’d be at least a mention if he’d been thrown out stealing twice in one game. 

Cobb, by the way, stole no bases at all in his three games against Almendares and Gervasio González.  I have play-by-plays for two of the games, and he was not caught stealing in either of them; in the third he hit 1 for 5 and didn’t score, while González did have three assists, so it’s possible “Striker” got him.

I haven’t read Diario de la Marina’s accounts of this series yet (everything I have comes from La Lucha), so maybe we can fill in some gaps soon.

2) I’ve seen at least one photo of Castillo circa 1911-1912 where he looks pretty large, though I don’t know if I could tell whether he was at 260-285 lbs.  Evans notes that he went hitless in the 1910 series against Detroit; indeed that was the case, as Castillo was 0 for 20 (with one walk) in five games for Almendares. 

3) John Henry Lloyd was for some reason known as “Sam Lloyd” in Cuba around this time—I don’t have any explanation.

cyclone joe: the blog

Check this out: a whole blog on Cyclone Joe Williams, which includes some never-before-seen photos and information about his family.

“a dark mystery”

In the February 24, 1917, issue of the Indianapolis Freeman, Dave Wyatt put together a piece called “Death in the Game,” in which he listed prominent black ballplayers who had died in the previous ten years.  Wyatt was puzzled by what he called the “dark mystery” of the leading cause of these deaths, tuberculosis: “[E]very man,” he wrote, “was near perfection in build, physically strong, not a weakling in the list.”  Moreover, ballplayers “get plenty of fresh air,” stay at “first-class hotels,” enjoy “good food and a variety to choose from,” and their profession keeps them healthy and outdoors.  The only explanation he could come up with was to finger “overwork” and “dissipation” as the prime suspects, while noting that “[t]he per cent of college players who die of the disease after taking to baseball is too small to attract attention.”

Below I’ve done my best to reproduce the list exactly as Wyatt gave it, though a few things are blurry.  I would have scanned the article in, but the Freeman 1917-18 reel I was able to borrow was filmed slightly out of focus, and it would not be very legible. 

Wyatt lists, in order, the player’s name, his cause of death, his team, and the place of his death (but not the date).

Wm. Brown—Heart failure, Union Giants, Chicago.
Brooks—Heart failure, Page Fence, Kalamazoo, Mich.
Leon Boles—Tuberculosis, Union Leland Giants [sic], Kansas City.
Wm. Bowman—Tuberculosis, Leland Philadelphia Giants [sic], Coraopolis, Pa.
S. Butler—Tuberculosis, Hot Springs Arlingtons, Little Rock.
R. Butler—Heart failure, Hot Springs Arlingtons, Little Rock.
Chenault—Heart failure, French Lick, Evansville.
C. Collier—Gunshot, Hot Springs Arlingtons, Hot Springs.
J. Williams—Pneumonia, Union Giants, Chicago.
F. White—Pneumonia, Union Giants, Chicago.
P. Reed—Heart failure, St. Paul Gophers, St. Paul.
F. Dixon—Heart failure, Paducah Giants, Paducah.
D. Howard—Gunshot, Cuban X Giants, East Liverpool, O.
Hayman—Violence, Philadelphia Giants, Norfolk, Va.
Bedford—Lightning, Cuban Giants, Louisville.
Spinner—Injury, Kansas Giants, Kansas City, Kas.
Monroe—Pneumonia, A. B. C.’s Kansas City, Indianapolis.
J. Miller—Heart failure, Union Giants, Omaha.
Richardson—Tuberculosis, Union Giants, Topeka.
Z. Partilla—Tuberculosis, Hot Springs Arlingtons, Hot Springs.
E. Lockhart—Gunshot, Cuban Giants, Athens, O.
Wm. Randolph—Tuberculosis, Philadelphia Giants, Columbus, O.
C. Lyons—Tuberculosis, Columbia Giants, Dayton, O.
A. Ross—Heart failure, Leland Giants, Chicago.
L. Pollard—Suffocation, Illinois Giants, Chicago.
R. Wilson—Insanity, Cuban X Giants, Chicago.
George Wilson—Insanity, Page Fence Giants, Palmyra, Mich.
Turner—Gunshot, A. B. C.’s, C. Giants, Chicago.
J. Wright—Knife wound, Union Giants, Chicago.
G. [illegible, starts with “R”]—Tuberculosis, Illinois Giants, Chicago.
R. [could be “B”] Washington—Tuberculosis, Paducah Giants, Memphis.
Wm. Monroe—Tuberculosis, American Giants, Chattanooga, Tenn.
Wm. Lindsey [sic]—Tuberculosis, American Giants, Kansas City.
F. Leland—Tuberculosis, Chicago Leland Giants, Chicago.
D. Talbert—Tuberculosis, Leland Giants, Omaha.
T. Morgan—Tuberculosis, Union Giants, Momence, Ill.
C. Huff—Tuberculosis, Hot Springs Arlingtons, Hot Springs.
Wm. Jackson—Tuberculosis, Cuban X Giants, New York.

UPDATE 2/5/2008 Edited to clean up some crappy writing and confused tenses.

UPDATE 2/8/2008 “Chenault” is John Chenault of the French Lick Plutos, discussed in this post on Rafael Figarola (toward the end).  Also check out this post on Bill Monroe’s death, and this one on Bill Lindsay’s.  George Wilson is, of course, discussed here and here (and Ray Wilson is briefly mentioned), thanks to Todd Peterson and Joe Niese.  “P. Reed” is Phil “Daddy” Reid, owner of the St. Paul Gophers (and not a player as far as I know).  See Todd Peterson’s great article on the Gophers in the latest Baseball Research Journal for more on Reid.

the giants win the pennant! the giants win the pennant!

Oops, wrong sport...