Ted Kimbro of the St. Louis Giants and Pearl Webster of the Brooklyn Royal Giants, both in 1916.
As the 1918 baseball season entered its stretch run, the military draft and the government’s “work or fight” order were putting heavy pressures on black professional teams. With several of their players gone to the service the Indianapolis A.B.C.s disbanded in late August. Meanwhile in Chicago Rube Foster, despite also having lost a number of performers, decided to soldier on.
In part Foster was led to this decision because white semipro baseball teams, staffed by players who worked in essential industries, were enjoying what Dave Wyatt in the Chicago Defender called “the greatest run of prosperity that it has undergone in years” (“A.B.C.’s Have Disbanded,” August 31, 1918). “Pikers beware,” he wrote three weeks later, “there are any number of high class National and American league players who…have employment considered essential and the industries furnishing such work have baseball teams” (“Beloit Returns to Wrest Championship From American Giants,” September 21, 1918). The American Giants thus had plenty of opponents who could attract fans. When the Cubs/Red Sox World Series (played entirely in September after the regular season was shut down early) ended with a Boston victory on September 11, Foster’s team became the main sports attraction in Chicago.
Wyatt explained (September 14, 1918) that Foster’s players also dealt with the work or fight order by seeking “essential” employment, thus obtaining draft deferrals or low classifications that would make them unlikely to be drafted. Pete Hill and Bruce Petway, for example, both found work as civilian employees of the U.S. Army Quartermasters Corps.
But a quieter, more insidious enemy was stalking baseball (and the world). Wyatt opened an article in the October 19 issue of the Defender this way:
“With old Jack Frost and his hellish cohorts influenza, pneumonia, colds and chills hurling all sorts of bombs our way, a few thousand of the loyal and brave devotees of baseball swooped down upon Schorling Park and demanded the unconditional surrender of the venerable old Jack.”
Of course you can’t defeat a pandemic by crowding together into a baseball park. The game Wyatt was writing about—a 7-to-0 win by the American Giants over a white all-star team—was the American Giants’ last contest for the season. On October 12 the director of the Illinois Department of Public Health issued an order closing theaters, dance halls, and other “places of public amusement” and banning “all public gatherings of a social nature, not essential to the conduct of the war.” “INFLUENZA EPIDEMIC CLOSES BASEBALL SEASON,” declared the Defender on November 2, 1918. Rube Foster had to cancel a game that would have pitted his American Giants against a white semipro team starring Jim “Hippo” Vaughn, who had pitched for the Cubs in the recent World Series.
Partly due to the fact that baseball was entering its offseason just as the pandemic took off, there was not a lot of contemporary commentary about the disease in relation to the Negro leagues, at least not that I could find. Remarkably, given that tens of millions (possibly as many as 100 million) died worldwide of the so-called Spanish flu, to my knowledge only two likely victims of the pandemic were connected to black baseball. Both contracted the illness in the military.
Dan Kennard, Ted Kimbro, McKinley Downs, and George Brown of the 1915 West Baden Sprudels. This is a detail from a larger photo sent to me by Kim Agan.
Born in St. Louis but raised in Oklahoma, Ted Kimbro began playing professional ball in 1914 with the West Baden Sprudels. After stints with the Louisville White Sox and St. Louis Giants, he moved east to join the Lincoln Giants. His entire baseball career took place before he turned 23; in 104 games against black opposition he hit .283, playing mostly third base and second base.
He was inducted into the U.S. Army on July 18, 1918, and sent to Camp Dix, New Jersey, but continued to play ball on weekends. His last appearance was for the Lincoln Giants on September 1 in a doubleheader against the Royal Giants. Less than a month later he was dead.
According to military records the cause of Kimbro’s death was bronchopneumonia, probably a result of influenza, occurring as it did at the height of the pandemic. The massive U.S. war effort greatly facilitated the spread of the virus, and Camp Dix was hit hard in September and October. Nearly 8000 soldiers came down with the disease, and 774 died. The whole huge training camp was quarantined on September 23, just a week before Kimbro passed away.
(Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 20, 1918, p. 18)
Like Kimbro, Pearl Franklyn“Specks” Webster was born in Missouri, the far northeastern corner to be exact. Also like Kimbro he started out with midwestern teams, but within a couple of years had moved to the east coast. The Royal Giants are the team he’s most identified with, but he played for at least eleven professional teams in the U.S., plus two more in Cuba.
Webster was a a catcher who ran really, really well, much like the better-known Bruce Petway. Although Petway, whose defense was legendary, was probably a much better defender than Webster (who spent a lot of time in the outfield and at first base), Webster was in turn a much better hitter, batting .301 against black opposition, versus Petway’s .231. Webster also averaged an astonishing 77 stolen bases per 154 games (he stole 73 in 146 games with recorded steals), while Petway averaged only 26 per 154 games over his career.
In 1918 Webster and Kimbro were teammates on both the Grand Central Terminal Red Caps and the Hilldale Club, appearing together for the latter team as late as August 8. They were inducted into the Army on the same day, July 18, and were assigned to the same training unit, the 153rd Depot Brigade.
Unlike Kimbro, Webster survived the Camp Dix outbreak. In fact he seems to have completed training and shipped out to France with the 807th Pioneer Infantry by the end of August, before things really went south at Camp Dix. He died in France (I still don’t know the exact location) on November 16. His cause of death was listed as lobar pneumonia. As in Kimbro’s case, although “influenza” isn’t mentioned in the record I have access to, it seems likely that his pneumonia was a consequence of the flu pandemic, given when and where it occurred.
Kimbro and Webster are two of the three black ballplayers known to have died in military service during World War I. The third, Hilldale’s Norman Triplett, died in France of “measles and pneumonia,” according to military records.
Other baseball influenza deaths (not Negro):
David Roth 10/12/1918 - minor leage Baltimore Birmingham Memphis
Thomas Reilly 10/18/1918 played StL NL and Cleveland AL
Leo McGraw 11/14/1918 - minor league
Larry Chappelle ~11/8/1918 at an Army camp near San Francisco. Chicago White Sox, Boston Braves
Silk O'Loughlin ML Umpire 12/20/1918
James O'Rourke 1/8/1919 various 1872-1893
James J. Hall 1/20/1919 Minor and Intl League
Jake Felz 1/27/1919 played Jersey City in Intl League
William Yawkey (owner Detroit) 3/5/1919. Accompanied by Ty Cobb when he died.
Posted by: Bill Mullins | July 20, 2020 at 01:37 AM