A few months ago Patrick Rock sent me copies of all the baseball coverage from the St. Louis Argus, 1919 through 1922. One of the first things I wanted to check was the U.S. Army Championships in late June / early July, 1920, and the concurrent movement of several players from the Army to the St. Louis Giants (Stewart, Moses Herring, and Heavy Johnson) and Kansas City Monarchs (Dobie Moore and Bullet Rogan).
There was nothing about Moore and Rogan, and Stewart still doesn’t have a first name, but otherwise the Argus confirms nearly everything I had speculated about, and adds some interesting new information.
--Johnson and Herring actually first appeared for the St. Louis Giants on June 24 against the Cuban Stars; in fact, Herring was hit by a pitch during the winning rally in the ninth inning (and may have scored the winning run). I hadn’t previously had even a line score for this game, so this is new:
--Here the Army team that the Giants played on June 28, featuring Branch Russell, Carl Glass, and Dorsey Battles as well as Johnson, Herring, and Stewart, is referred to as the “U. S. Army Champions,” and is explicitly said to consist of players who were in St. Louis to compete in the Army athletic meet (meaning that Heavy Johnson, for example, must have been competing in some event). Also, there were supposed to have been two games between the Giants and the Army team, but I’ve found a record of only the game on Monday.
--Here is some commentary from the St. Louis Giants’ owner, Charlie Mills, on his new acquisitions. Headline first:
And then the relevant section from the article:
--Here is the first non-circumstantial evidence that Moses Herring of the 25th Infantry was indeed the St. Louis Giants’ Herring:
--Here is also confirmation that all winners of events at the Army Championships were to have been given berths in the Olympic trials held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, later in July.
As I have noted before, the trials took place on July 17 and 18, which conflict with St. Louis Giants games in which Moses Herring appeared. So he definitely chose to play baseball in the Negro National League rather than compete to be in the Olympics. I still don’t know whether Herring’s co-champion in the running hop, step, and jump, future Negro Leaguer Branch Russell, went to the Olympic trials or not.
--Finally, the following piece:
This tells us two things:
1) That “Johnson was kept out of the game after Monday by the army authorities,” which hints at an explanation for why Heavy Johnson, according to Dave Wyatt the best prospect of all the Army ballplayers joining the Giants and Monarchs at that time, did not continue with the Negro National League (he would join the Monarchs in 1922)—presumably Johnson did not get himself properly discharged, for whatever reason;
And 2) as I had speculated, Herring competed in (and won) the running broad jump on Monday, July 5, then rushed to Giants’ Park to join the game against the Cubans already in progress, coming in for Eddie Holtz at third base.
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