Agate Type

the big show

It’s official: I’m working with Scott Simkus and Sean Forman to bring Negro league and Cuban league statistics to Baseball-Reference.com.  There is a small story in today’s USA Today about it, which doesn’t seem to be online yet; but Scott has the text at his blog.  We’re aiming at an April launch, although I don’t think that’s set in stone yet. 

We won’t be presenting the entire history of the Negro leagues or Cuban baseball at one fell swoop; we’ll be doing it incrementally, the way I have over the years here.  Soon Pete Hill, Juan Padrón, Irvin Brooks, Carlos Morán, Bullet Rogan, and everyone else I've written about here in the past four years, and many more, will have their own, genuine bb-ref pages, with actual stats and the best biographical information we can come up with.

Check back here, or at Scott’s blog, or at the baseball-reference blog for updates and further information.

UPDATE 1:18 p.m. Here’s the online version of the USA Today article (which is better than the print version, actually).

pete hill’s autograph

Ron Hill recently obtained Pete Hill’s records from the Railroad Retirement Board.  Here is a copy of his original, handwritten application for a Social Security number.  It’s the document from which the Form SS-5 I got from the Social Security Administration was typed.  They have exactly the same information, except on this document we get a very good sample of Pete’s signature—much better than the scan of his World War I draft card (though I am requesting a better copy of that).

luis padrón, punch cigars, 1910

A while back David Lawrence sent me this image of Luis Padrón, from his 1910 Punch Cigars card (a series that also included Pete Hill).  It is, as David put it, “a particularly distinguished portrait.”  It would have gone well with my article on Padrón in Base Ball, had I remembered it.

“watch us next year”

Here’s the reverse side of the postcard featuring the 1908 Manitowoc, Wisconsin, ball club and its star pitcher/outfielder, George H. Wilson.  Dan Yaw doesn’t know the identity of the sender, “Jack,” who could be one of the players, a player’s relative, just a fan in Manitowoc….who knows?  But maybe the addressee, Otto Foerster of Sheboygan, is a clue.

Does anybody happen to know how they did in 1909?

Looking back at the front of the postcard, I like Dog the Mascot.  And I hope nobody needs me to tell them it’s not THAT Cy Young. 

history out of focus

Here’s another example of nearly unreadable microfilm: the Indianapolis Freeman, one of the most important sources for black baseball in the 1910s.  This is a box score for a game between the American Giants and Cuban Stars (not the Cuban Giants, as the box score mistakenly has it in one place), printed in the September 22, 1917, issue of the Freeman. 



This box score (and much of the rest of 1917) appeared this way in several microfilm readers I tried, so it wasn’t the reader.  Maybe the original newsprint was smeared in places.  But as I recall (I read this paper several months ago), the microfilm gave the distinct impression of simply having been filmed out of focus—another case of microfilm malpractice.  The quality through 1917 varied—much of it, while not great, is readable, or at least better than the above—but as the reel moved into 1918, it became less and less legible, until I finally gave up.

I’m also reasonably certain that there are multiple versions of these years floating around out there (and it could also be that the original paper copies exist somewhere).  If anybody has seen better, legible versions of the 1917 and/or 1918 Freeman, I’d love to hear from you.

Incidentally, Google News Archive has a good run of the Freeman (from 1888 to 1915, it appears).

george h. wilson, manitowoc 1908

Dan Yaw has sent in a scan of this fantastic 1908 postcard, complete with enthusiastic commentary by the sender, featuring the Manitowoc, Wisconsin, team, champions of the Lake Shore League.  Number six, standing on the far right, is our old friend George H. Wilson.