Orville Riggins, Jr., died on November 30, 2010. (See comments from his family on this post.) Here he is, “Baby Riggins,” a little short of eleven months old, cheering on his father in a Detroit Stars/Columbus Buckeyes game at Mack Park, Detroit, on Sunday, June 12, 1921:
Although Baby Riggins was Orville Jr., his father the ballplayer actually went by the name Arvell Riggins. There’s a fair amount of evidence for this, most importantly his own signature on his World War I draft card:
There are also census records and a number of newspaper references with varying spellings (Arvil, Arvel, etc.), as well as his death certificate, for which his wife was the informant:
Although he was sometimes called Orville in the papers, too, (as well as Bill and Bo), it seems pretty unlikely to me that a relatively common name like Orville would be consistently misspelled more or less the same way, unless he was going around telling people that’s how it should be spelled.
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