Agate Type

Dobie Moore: One Last Word

Dobie Moore with the 25th Infantry Wreckers in 1916

Long-time readers of this blog will remember my nearly decade-long effort at chronicling the search for Walter “Dobie” Moore, the great Kansas City Monarchs shortstop who was shot in 1926 and subsequently dropped out of sight. When I last wrote about this in 2016, we had established the case, pretty much beyond a reasonable doubt, that Dobie Moore the ballplayer and Walter Moore of Detroit, who died on August 20, 1947, were the same person.

But of course it is always helpful to have confirmation. Up to the plate steps Karl Jensen, who also does research for the Medal of Honor Historical Society of the United States, locating the grave sites of Medal of Honor recipients. First, Karl found the 1919 World War I service card for Walter Moore of Atlanta, who enlisted at Georgia’s Fort Oglethorpe on May 11, 1915, at the age of 22 and two months. He then served in Company A of the 25th Infantry until June, 1919, and was discharged “for immediate re-enlistment”—which of course fits Dobie Moore’s career in the Army.

(Moore evidently did re-enlist immediately, as in January 1920 he appears in the U.S. census with the 25th Infantry at Camp Stephen D. Little in Arizona. I really don’t know much about military records, so I am curious about whether there is another record somewhere that shows this last period of service. He apparently re-upped for an additional year, as he and Bullet Rogan first played for the Kansas City Monarchs in early July, 1920.)

Then Karl found Moore’s Veterans Administration Master Index Card. The dates, unit, and serial number—335,099—all match. It gives a birth date of February 8, 1893—Moore, like Rogan, evidently lied about his age when he enlisted—and a clerk has penciled in his date of death: August 20, 1947, the date Walter Moore died in Detroit.

I was already quite sure we had the right person, but thanks to Karl, this should lay to rest any lingering doubts.

If you want to go back and follow the process from the beginning, here are the relevant links:

• Why all published birth and death information for Dobie Moore is wrong (October 20, 2007)
• Walter Moore’s WW2 draft card found (October 23, 2007)
• Image of Walter Moore’s WW2 draft card (February 8, 2013)
• Walter Moore’s death record found (April 30, 2013)
• Dobie Moore at George Carr funeral 1948 (April 30, 2013)
• Copy of Walter Moore’s death certificate; second 1948 sighting of Dobie Moore (May 9, 2013)
• 1924 passenger list found (May 17, 2014)
• Dobie Moore’s younger brother Allen “Pete” Moore was also a professional ballplayer (January 29, 2016)

taft’s giant face & the 1908 leland giants

Fit for Strange Maps, this is just a random (and slightly unsettling) thing I saw on the front page of the Chicago Examiner for June 8, 1908: a map of the 1908 Republican National Convention, held at Chicago Coliseum, in the shape of the face of the eventual nominee, William Howard Taft.

Tenuous baseball connection: Taft, of course, inaugurated the tradition of the president throwing out the first ball on Opening Day.

Somewhat less tenuous Negro league connection: Just a couple of days before this, Taft’s brother, Charles P. Taft, attended a game between the white semipro Gunthers and Rube Foster’s Leland Giants.  Bored with the major leagues, Taft had (supposedly) “long cherished a desire to see the famous negro team play ball.” His white beard made him “easily identified” by everyone in the park.  He “applauded the negro players frequently,” and when the Lelands had the game safely put away in the sixth (leading 11 to 2), Rube Foster himself came in to pitch, apparently so Taft could see him work.  “If that fellow was pitching in a league he would make a sensation,” Taft enthused afterwards.

As the following article from the Chicago Tribune points out, there was probably more going on here than Taft’s keen interest in black baseball.  President Roosevelt, also a Republican, had expelled 167 soldiers from the all-black 25th Infantry Regiment* after a series of incidents between the soldiers and white citizens of Brownsville, Texas, and a what turned out to be a false accusation of murder.  The consequent outrage on behalf of the wronged soldiers undermined African American support for the Republican Party, and the candidate’s brother’s visit to the Lelands/Gunthers game was part of a concerted effort to mend fences.

Charles P. Taft would own the Cubs for a few years in the mid-1910s.

*-The 25th Infantry moved within a few years to Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, where it fielded the “Wreckers,” one of the best black baseball teams of the 1910s, featuring future Negro leaguers Dobie Moore, Heavy Johnson, Lemuel Hawkins, Bob Fagan, and Hall of Famer Bullet Rogan.

  

(click to enlarge)

UPDATE 6/21/2011 Added image of President Taft throwing out the first ball.

rogan’s debut with the 25th infantry wreckers

Patrick Rock has continued his groundbreaking research on the 25th Infantry Wreckers in Hawaii.  His most recent work chronicles the arrival of Wilber Rogan at Schofield Barracks in the summer of 1915 and his first appearances on the diamond.  On July 1 he appeared at third base and on the mound for the First Battalion in an intramural game; on July 4 he joined the Wreckers’ varsity team for the first time, playing third base.

That’s Oscar “Heavy” Johnson at shortstop in both games (presumably not as heavy in those days as he would be later).  As Patrick notes, “What is of note is the attention paid to Rogan's debut in the game of the 1st, making it abundantly clear that his arrival had been highly anticipated.”

 

(Pacific Commercial Advertiser, July 2, 1915, p. 12; click to enlarge)

(Pacific Commercial Advertiser, July 6, 1915, p. 12; click to enlarge)

“certainly our ball players are professionals” : the 25th infantry wreckers, hawaii, 1915

Patrick Rock has come up with some fascinating material on the Twenty-Fifth Infantry Wreckers in Hawaii during the teens.  The Twenty-Fifth was one of the four all-black Army regiments (also including the Twenty-Fourth Infantry and the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry) known collectively as the “Buffalo Soldiers.”  All four regiments maintained good baseball teams in the 1910s and 1920s, but the Wreckers were the preeminent Army baseball team of that time (at least among teams that stayed together for a number of years, as opposed to temporary wartime aggregations), featuring in its lineup such luminaries as Bullet Rogan, Dobie Moore, Heavy Johnson, and Branch Russell, along with a number of other future Negro league players.  The Wreckers enjoyed their heyday at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, from 1915 to 1918, and at Camp Stephen D. Little, Cochise Santa Cruz County, Arizona, from 1918 to about 1921 (or perhaps later).

Patrick has been scouring Hawaii newspapers for reports on the Wreckers and their participation in both Army leagues and competitions involving civilian teams.  I wanted to post one article he found (from the Honolulu Commercial Advertiser, July 18, 1915) about a dispute that erupted between the Twenty-Fifth and the other (non-black) Army teams at Schofield Barracks, who wanted to restrict the Wreckers’ practices and stop them from paying their players and exempting them from guard and fatigue duty.  It has long been understand that the Twenty-Fifth Infantry team was essentially a professional club, and here we have the regiment’s representative, Lt. Charles Wyman, being quite frank about it.  “Certainly our ball players are professionals,” he says.  “They have received pay for playing.”

Anyway, check out the whole article.  (You should be able to enlarge by clicking.)

 

johnson, herring, stewart, 1920 st. louis giants

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:

 

(St. Louis Argus, June 25, 1920, p. 5)

--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.

(St. Louis Argus, June 25, 1920, p. 5)

--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:

(St. Louis Argus, July 2, 1920, p. 5)

--Here is the first non-circumstantial evidence that Moses Herring of the 25th Infantry was indeed the St. Louis Giants’ Herring:

(St. Louis Argus, July 9, 1920, p. 1)

--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.

 

(St. Louis Argus, July 9, 1920, p. 1)

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:

(St. Louis Argus, July 9, 1920, p. 5)

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.

heavy johnson, st. louis giants, 1920

More than two years ago, I presented a circumstantial case that slugger Heavy Johnson played briefly for the St. Louis Giants in 1920, then returned to the Army for another two years before signing with the Monarchs in 1922.

Well, here is a passage from an article in the St. Louis Argus (June 2, 1922) about Opening Day, 1922, with the Monarchs, featuring Heavy Johnson, visiting the Stars:

 

“Johnson will be remembered as the husky soldier boy catcher who was with the Giants for a short time last year.  He returned to the army and on his release he was picked up by the Monarchs.”

The reporter says “last year,” which would be 1921; but it seems highly probable that he’s talking about 1920, when an Army ballplayer named Johnson played in two games for the Giants (one as a catcher), knocking out a game-breaking triple.  Dave Wyatt wrote at the time (July 10, 1920; see below) that “Uncle Sam has just recently turned loose a whole flock of baseball players from his army of athletes; St. Louis Giants grabbed three classy boys, one a catcher who is said to be the peer of them all.”  The three were infielders Moses Herring of the 25th Infantry, Stewart of the 24th, and “Johnson,” the catcher, “the peer of them all.”  It looks pretty certain now that he was indeed talking about Heavy Johnson.

Many, many thanks to Patrick Rock, who has recently supplied me with the complete baseball coverage of the St. Louis Argus for 1921 and 1922!  

Here is the Dave Wyatt article (Chicago Defender, July 10, 1920):

forgotten negro leaguer #1: moses l. herring

This is the first entry in a new category called “Forgotten Negro Leaguers,” about players who appear sketchily or incorrectly in the usual reference works (say, with only a last name, or with the wrong first name), who have been mistaken for or conflated with other players, or who don’t appear at all in any guise.

For the first entry it seemed appropriate to choose Moses L. Herring, the 25th Infantry sergeant and athlete I identified here as the “Herring” who played third base for the 1920 St. Louis Giants.  The case, I should note, is still circumstantial, in that I haven’t found any positive statements in the contemporary press that give Herring of the Giants a first name or identify him as an Army ballplayer.  But it is nevertheless a powerful case, at least in my opinion.  Herring, it appears, passed up a chance at the Olympic trials in 1920 (his event was the running hop, step, and jump) to play baseball in the Negro National League.

Unfortunately Herring was not a brilliant ballplayer.  He appeared in 16 of the St. Louis Giants’ 60 games against NNL opposition in 1920, batting .171/.237/.229 in 41 plate appearances, with a single extra-base hit (a triple), two walks, and two stolen bases.  He played 15 games (103 innings) at third base, fielding at an .850 clip and compiling a range factor of 2.97 (corresponding figures for all the Giants’ third basemen were .919 and 3.44).  He appeared once as a pinch-runner.  1920 would be Herring’s first and last season with a top-flight Negro League team, and may have been his last in professional baseball at any level.

Courtesy of Kevin Johnson, I now have Herring’s record from the Missouri State Archives Soldiers Database:

Name: Herring, Moses L.
Residence: St. Louis, Missouri
Inducted at: Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis, Missouri, on July 12, 1915
Place of birth: Abbeyville, South Carolina [probably Abbeville]
Age at induction: 21 5/6 years [putting his birth in August or September, 1894]
Served in: Company E, 25th Infantry
Promoted to sergeant: February 1919
Honorably discharged: (no date)
(The missing discharge date is unfortunate, as it could more definitively establish Moses Herring as the ballplayer.)

In the 1930 census, there is a “Mose Herring,” 35, working as the manager of a dance hall in St. Louis; he is listed as a World War I veteran.  He is, however, listed as born in Missouri, though it should be noted that he was boarding in someone’s house, and it’s quite possible that whoever was interviewed by the enumerator didn’t know where he had been born.

Lastly, here is his record in the U.S. Veterans Gravesites database:

Name: Moses L. Herring
Service Info: Sgt U.S. Army World War I
Death Date: 12 January 1931
Cemetery: Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery, St. Louis, Missouri

will the real oscar johnson please stand up?

Heavy Johnson’s current “official” dates, as found in Riley’s Biographical Encyclopedia (2001 addendum p. 939), are: born November 2, 1896, Atchison, Kansas; died January 1964, Cleveland, Ohio.  There are two reasons for thinking that these might be mistaken:

1) The Social Security Death Index (SSDI) has an Oscar Johnson who fits these dates perfectly (born November 2, 1896; died January 1964), plus his Social Security Number was issued in Ohio before 1951.  Of the seven Oscar Johnsons listed in the SSDI who died in January 1964, this is the only one who comes anywhere close to the information  Riley gives for Heavy Johnson. 

When looking, however, at the “Ohio Deaths” database at Ancestry.com, the only fit is an Oscar Johnson, “non-white,” aged 67 (thus born in 1896 or 1897), who died on January 12, 1964—in Cincinnati, not Cleveland. (Let me emphasize that he’s the only Oscar Johnson listed in this database to have died in the state of Ohio in January 1964.)

Oscar “Heavy” Johnson, the baseball player, would not have filled out a World War I draft card, because he was already in the Army, where he served from at least October 1915 until spring 1922, when he joined the Monarchs.  However: I did find a draft card for an African-American named Oscar Johnson born on November 2, 1897—in Cincinnati, Ohio.  And one of the things we definitely know about Heavy Johnson is that he hailed from Atchison, Kansas.

This means that we can make a strong link between the Oscar Johnson of the SSDI and an Oscar Johnson who was born in Cincinnati.  There is a one-year discrepancy in the birth date (1896 in SSDI, 1897 on the WWI draft card), but that’s pretty common in such records.  In order for us to believe Heavy Johnson’s dates in Riley, we’d have to believe that there existed two black men named Oscar Johnson who had the same birthday (November 2, either in 1896 or 1897) and who died in the same month (January 1964) in the same state (Ohio), but that somehow they don’t coexist in either the SSDI or Ohio Deaths database.  It is certainly possible, but you can see that it’s a little unlikely.

2) The second reason for doubting the dates given for Heavy Johnson is that the birthdate, November 2, 1896, does not square with the 1895 Kansas State Census, which was, presumably, taken in 1895, and includes Oscar, aged two months, living with his family in Atchison.  The 1900 and 1905 records obviously show the same family, with the ages more or less consistent throughout (allowing for the small variations typical in these kinds of records).  The 1900 census shows a birth date of April, 1895, for Oscar.  The 1905 Kansas State Census shows Oscar aged 10.  As I’ve said before, this is the only African-American named Oscar Johnson shown living in Atchison over these three censuses.  Again, while it’s possible that there were two black Oscar Johnsons in Atchison over this time, only one of which shows up in the records, the likelier explanation is that Heavy Johnson is indeed this Oscar, and that he was born well before November 2, 1896. (Images from these census records were posted yesterday.)

I have three other records to throw into the mix here.  The first is the 1920 census, which shows a black man named Oscar Johnson assigned to Camp Stephen D. Little in Nogales, Arizona, aged 28, born in Kansas, with both parents born in Virginia (the birth states match the Atchison Oscar Johnson).

The second is a World War II draft card for an Oscar Johnson living in Ohio, who was born on April 20, 1892, in Atchison, Kansas:

And the third is this, from Ohio Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines, World War, 1917-18, p. 8543 (digitized by Ancestry.com):

To translate:
Name: Oscar Johnson
Race: Colored
Residence: Youngstown, Ohio
Enlistment Divison: Regular Army
Enlistment Location: Columbus Barracks, Ohio
Enlistment Date: 10 December 1913
Birth Place: Atchison, Kansas
Age at Enlistment: 21 7/12 years [meaning born in April or May, 1892]
Assigned to Company K, 25th Infantry until discharge
Promoted to PFC: 1 March 1917
Demoted to Private: 1 November 1917
Promoted to PFC: 9 July 1918
Honorable Discharge: 30 March 1919

Again, unless there were two Oscar Johnsons from Atchison, Kansas, who served simultaneously in the 25th Infantry, one of whom doesn’t show up in any records, these three records all refer to the same man, and he’s the baseball player, Heavy Johnson.  The 1892 birth year instead of 1895 is probably the result of Johnson lying about his age to get in the military, just as Bullet Rogan and Oscar Charleston did.  (And Rollo Wilson, btw, seems to be wrong on the small detail that Johnson left Atchison directly to enlist in the Army.)

Note also that Oscar Johnson was living in Youngstown when he enlisted.  This provides some strong evidence that Benjiman Harrison Johnson (born in Atchison, living in Youngstown), whose draft card I posted yesterday, was in fact Oscar Johnson’s brother Harrison.

So, although there are certainly some loose ends left, a likely interpretation of Oscar Johnson’s early life, as found in these records, would go something like this: he was born in Atchison, probably on April 20, 1895 (or thereabouts); sometime after 1905, he, his brother, and their father (as noted on Harrison’s draft card), and perhaps others in their family, moved to Youngstown, Ohio, where, in 1913, Oscar added three years to his age in order to enlist in the Army. He then used this false birth date for the rest of his life (just as Rogan did).  He was honorably discharged from the Army in March 1919, but had reenlisted by January 1920, when he appears in the census at Camp Stephen D. Little in Arizona.  He may have played two games for the St. Louis Giants during a brief break from the Army in July 1920; he definitely left the service for good when he joined the Monarchs in 1922.  His last stops in the major Negro Leagues were Cleveland (in 1928) and Memphis (off and on from 1928 to 1933, with a detour to the Dayton Marcos in 1931); by 1942 he was back in Cleveland, not far from Youngstown, where his family, or part of it, had lived in the 1910s (and perhaps still did).

Unfortunately, we’re left (once again) not knowing when or where Heavy Johnson died—though it would seem that Riley had independent information that he passed away in Cleveland, probably in the 1960s (the original edition gave his death as 1966 in Cleveland).

UPDATE 7:47 p.m.  ...though I should add that there is an Oscar Johnson,“non-white,” in the “Ohio Deaths” DB who died in Cleveland on October 9, 1960, aged 68 (consistent with the April 1892 birthdate Heavy Johnson seems to have used).  There is, of course, no direct proof that this is Heavy Johnson, but it does match the general thrust of the records presented here.

did casey stengel discover bullet rogan?

Reproduced below, with David Skinner’s permission, are some excerpts from several email conversations I’ve had with him about Casey Stengel, J. L. Wilkinson, Bullet Rogan, and the 25th Infantry Wreckers.  I’ve drawn on David’s research in some of these posts, but thought readers deserved to see everything he had to say.  (The excerpts are from two different emails sent several months apart, and overlap a little in subject matter.)

I respectfully disagree [David writes] that there is ANY evidence that Casey scouted Rogan for Wilkinson.  In his ghosted Casey at the Bat, he remembers him as “Grogan” and recalls playing the army team in Douglas, New Mexico.  He heaps praise on “Grogan” and credits him with later playing for the Monarchs, but makes no claim to have recommended him to Wilkinson.  This isn't to say that Casey didn't talk to Wilkie.  Casey's faulty memory is partly responsible for the misstatements of Robert Creamer in Stengel: His Life and Times, which in turn are the source for the misstatements of later writers like John Holway and Janet Bruce.

It was Creamer who decided that “Grogan” was Rogan and that Douglas, New Mexico, was Douglas, Arizona.  He should have quit while he was ahead.  I believe Creamer was the first to wrongly locate the 25th at Fort Huachuca, since it was the closest army base at the time of his writing and he didn't know of Camp Little, etc.  He may also have invented the story of Stengel tipping Wilkie about the Wreckers players, or at least Rogan.  Casey may have known Bullet, could have seen him or played against him in earlier days in Kansas City.  But he didn't scout him or even see him play in Arizona.  The Nogales Daily Herald, which I went through to research my article on the Wreckers for the Arizona Baseball Journal, tells us that Rogan, although team captain, was unavailable for the Stengel series, and that he neither pitched nor played a position.

David

***

I do know that Stengel never saw Rogan pitch in Arizona, despite his assertion that he did (although he called him Grogan), but he surely knew him from earlier days in Kansas City.  I know little about the 24th Infantry and nothing of the cavalries.  There may have been a company at least of the 24th at Camp Newell in Naco (the border town near here), by the way, the only place in the mainland U.S. to have been bombed by a foreign power (by mistake by an American mercenary flying for Mexican revolutionaries in 1919).  The Bisbee Museum has a ripped photo of a baseball team from a company of the 24th, no other ID.  I know nothing, although I would very much like to know, about baseball or players (except a story in the Douglas Daily Dispatch of a 10th Cavalry game vs.  the white 1st Cavalry team from Camp Harry J. Jones in Douglas, the third of the World War I / Mexican Revolution-era border posts) at Ft. Huachuca (where I used to teach and my son played soccer), but I do know from the post historian that the 25th was not there until after the period in question.

What I mostly know about is the 25th at Camp Stephen D. Little in Nogales in 1919, which I researched for an article in the one-shot Arizona Baseball Journal a decade or so ago.  They in fact did not play a lot of outside baseball, although each company had a team and they played each other, the details of which games were not reported.  I went through the Nogales daily for the whole year, after finding nothing in Tucson or Phoenix papers (also nil in Bisbee and Douglas dailies), and there apparently was off-post track and football (Dobie Moore starred in both) but little reported baseball.  The Wreckers were bragged by the Daily Herald as the best team in the Army, but their games were little reported, maybe a mention of winning a home game vs.  a local team from Arizona or Sonora, but no game stories. 

Until the visit of Stengel’s “K.C. All-Stars.”  The games at the Morley Avenue  grounds (site of the present WPA-built job where the Arizona-Mexico League and other ‘30s and ‘50s teams played in OB as well as the 2003 indie league club I operated, which led the league when it folded) were heavily front page promoted, initially filled with misinformation about “Stengler,” a “pitcher for the White Sox,” but later with much info about the KC players, five (including Casey, who was between engagements at the time) with major league experience, the best remembered being the catcher, future batting champ Bubbles Hargrave.  The rest of the so-called major leaguers had only had cups of coffee, two with the 1914 Buffeds, but the five noted all checked out, after allowing for misspellings.  There was a top AAA pitcher on the team as well.

The games themselves were barely covered except to note a fast game in front of a big crowd, one runs-and-hits-only line score.  Moore hit a big home run to win one game, one result (the final game) was never reported, and nothing more about baseball after the morning of game 3.  Captain Rogan, as he was called (his baseball rather than army title; all commissioned officers were of course white), did not play.  Little else to be gleaned from the Herald, just a lineup for one game with a few last names of future Negro Leaguers: Ward, 3B, White, RF, Johnson (which one?) C, Fagen (sic) 2B, Herring 1B, Moore, SS, making them the only Negro Leaguers I could confirm playing vs. “K.C.”  It was previously reported that “Captain Rogan and his aggregation of hitters,” would not be there, with the two future Negro Leaguers among them being Goliath and Hawkins.  Other Negro League names of Wrecker players mentioned during the season include OF McNair and P Cooper.  Of course most of the above names are linked to the Monarchs, but you know of Herring (and a Johnson!) with the 1920 St. Louis Giants; Goliath, Ward, and White were with the 1920 Chicago Giants.  It seems more than the Monarchs benefited from the 25th, but Wilkie certainly got the cream.

David

David also pointed out that the 25th Infantry was not, in 1919-1920, stationed at Ft.  Huachuca:

The 25th moved from Hawaii to Camp Stephen D. Little, and would not move to Ft.  Huachuca for some time.  To quote my article in the Arizona Baseball Journal:

Part of the confusion comes from the fact that Ft. Huachuca was long the home of black regiments, and that the 25th actually was stationed there from 1932 to 1942, and elements of it were there from 1928 to 1931.  In 1919, however, the 10th Cavalry, at Huachuca from 1913 to 1931, was the only black regiment on post.

I footnote that from Cornelius Smith’s post history, but the dates were confirmed for me by the post historian, directly from army records.

David

I also wanted to add to David’s commentary the fact that by 1920 J. L. Wilkinson had already known Wilber Rogan for several years.  According to Phil Dixon, Rogan pitched briefly for Wilkinson’s All-Nations club during a furlough from the Army in 1917, including one game (a loss) against the St. Louis Giants (see his book The Monarchs 1920-1938, pages 24-25).

army ballplayers postscript

A few points of elaboration and some additional information on my explorations of the Army veterans who joined the Negro National League during its first three seasons:

1)    I don’t think I properly explained why it seems to me plausible that Heavy Johnson could have played a couple of games with the St. Louis Giants in 1920 and then disappeared, apparently back into the Army, only to emerge again in the spring of 1922.  It’s the fact of the Army championships, which gave many soldiers a reason to be in St. Louis temporarily in late June and early July of 1920.  Perhaps Johnson couldn’t get himself released from his military obligations (while his teammates Stewart and Moses Herring could), or perhaps he had no interest in a Negro League career at that time, and only played in those two games to pick up some extra cash.  As a parallel, we have the case of Branch Russell, who was definitely in St. Louis in 1920, and who would join the Monarchs along with Johnson in 1922.  He evidently stayed in the Army rather than pursue an NNL career right away—as did, apparently, Carl Glass.   There was also 56-pound-weight tosser Ezekiel Carolina, who, at the same time and place, decided to forego a (very good) shot at going to the Olympics.

2)    David Skinner tells me that Dobie Moore was a well-known participant in off-post football and track and field in southern Arizona in 1919.  Similarly, Larry Lester reports in his recent book on the 1924 Black World Series that Moore specialized in the 440-yard relay and the long jump, and played wide receiver on the “service football team” (I’m not sure if this means a 25th Infantry team, or something else).  In fact, I had initially thought that Dobie Moore might have been on the Southern Department’s 440-yard relay team in the Army championships, but it turned out to be the sprinter Richard Moore, who went to the Olympic trials.  I would bet that Richard Moore participated in those off-post track and field competitions back in Arizona, too…

3)    I’ve been able to push back the date of the debut of William “Wise” Johnson (a.k.a. “Big C”) with the Dayton Marcos to at least June 13, 1920.  On that day Johnson appeared as a substitute in right field against Joe Green’s Chicago Giants.

For easy reference, here are the first five posts in this series:

Where’s Wilber?
From the Wreckers to the St. Louis Giants
Bubbles, Heavy, or the Big C?
The 1920 Army Championships
From the Army to the Negro Leagues