Courtesy of Brian Campf, here is a photograph of the 1902 Cuban Giants, from the pages of a 1903 issue of Tip Top Weekly, a publication aimed at kids and primarily known as the original vehicle for the Frank Merriwell serials.
Brian wondered what (if anything) I knew about these players. Here goes:
1) Green is probably not Pete Green, a Brooklyn high school graduate whom I’ve got born in 1891. However, there is some reason to think that Pete Green might have been several years older than that, in fact just old enough to be playing professionally in 1903, so stay tuned.
2) William “Hippo” Galloway, who as a third baseman for the Woodstock club of the Canadian League in 1899 was the last (known) black player in organized baseball until Jackie Robinson (give or take Charlie Grant in 1901, Jimmy Claxton in 1916, and any number of Cubans). It would probably be most accurate to say that Galloway was the last openly black player in organized baseball.
3) I don’t know anything about Day yet, but I have seen his name in plenty of box scores.
4) Sampson was evidently nicknamed “Clam Hand,” but other than that I’ve got nothing.
5) The outfielder “King” Kelly was supposed to be a “funny coacher,” but I don’t have his first name yet.
6) John García was a Cuban-born catcher who grew up in the United States. He would die from a heart attack suffered during a game in 1904. I wrote an article about him in the Outsider Baseball Bulletin in 2010.
7) John “Pop” Watkins was, of course, a very well-known coach who organized a number of second-tier teams up and down the east coast, most notably the Havana Red Sox. He discovered and developed a number of future stars, such as Phil Cockrell, Toussaint Allen, Dennis Graham, and George Dixon. I wrote a series of posts on him a few years ago.
8) I know nothing about the shortstop Bolan other than his name.
9) Wallace Clifford Gordon was an infielder from Painesville, Ohio. His career has been attributed to the catcher/first baseman Sam Gordon, who was from West Virginia. Wallace Gordon played for the Cuban Giants for many years. He was standing next to William Bedford when Bedford was killed by lightning at Inlet Park in Atlantic City in 1909. (That makes two Cuban Giants players who died in on-field incidents in the 1900s.) At the end of his career he played for the Indianapolis ABCs in 1914 and 1915, and published poetry in the Indianapolis Ledger.
Bolan also may be Samuel "Sam" Bolan, who played baseball (Gorhams (1897) and Colored brooklyn Giants).
Posted by: james brunson | March 18, 2012 at 11:29 AM
Fantastic, thanks! I actually posted an article about the Acme Colored Giants a long time ago:
http://agatetype.typepad.com/agate_type/2010/01/ed-wilson-the-acme-colored-giants-1898.html
There's Eddie Day and William Kelly--I should have remembered it.
Posted by: Gary Ashwill | March 14, 2012 at 03:56 PM
From memory so possibly incorrect:
3) Edward (Eddie) Day; from Reading, PA. Died soon after this photo (1905?) and his death was actually included in the year end summary of either the Reach or Spalding Guide (or maybe both).
4) Clarence (Clem) Sampson; from a small town outside Binghamton, NY. Mentioned as a Major League caliber pitcher by Sol White. Never really seen any proof of this, but he was basically the Cuban Giants' ace from 1900 to 1906.
5) William Kelley: Like Day (and Sampson and Bolan, I think), he played on the Celeron (NY) Acme Giants, the last black team in organized BB. He can be found in the census and I vaguely remember there was something odd about his family structure.
8) Bolan: Think his name, like Day, was Edward too. See above.
One of the interesting things about John Bright, the original owner of the Cuban Giants was that he always tried to recruit any African-American players who played in organized BB, apparently figuring that they had to be good if that was on their resume. Despite the awfulness of the Celeron team, Bright took its cream.
I also never see this listed but John Bright himself, a very important figure in early blackball, died in 1913 (August, I think) at his home in Hoboken, NY. His son supposedly took over the Cuban Giants but they were actually booked by Nat Strong until fading away during World World One.
The team was revived briefly by one of the players, Harry Leavell, during the war but then disappeared again until the name was revived as the Brooklyn Cuban Giants in the early 1920s (once again booked by Nat Strong and his cronies).
You should really write a piece about Harry Leavell (name spelled multiple ways). He died in the 1950s in Brooklyn and there is an obit for him if I remember correctly but, even more interestingly, census and newspaper data from the 1900s seem to indicate that he was a bigamist.
He played for a white team in Lima, Ohio, and married there. He then moved on and remarried the woman who would remain his wife. A couple of years later, his Lima wife sued for divorce on the grounds of abandonment.
Like Dave Brown later on, it was easier then to simply uproot yourself and start over somewhere else.
Posted by: JR | March 12, 2012 at 06:40 PM