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negro leagues DB update: 1920-21 cuban league

(Crossposted at Seamheads.com)

The latest addition to the Seamheads Negro Leagues DB covers the 1920/21 winter league season in Cuba. Heading the bill that off-season was none other than the biggest name in baseball at the time, one George Herman Ruth, fronting the New York Giants.

The Babe was a little late, showing up only for the last half of the Giants' schedule against Habana and Almendares (see his passport application here). Most famously, this series saw Ruth get upstaged by Cuban slugger Cristóbal Torriente, who smashed three home runs in one game (albeit these were off George Kelly, not normally a pitcher) while Ruth went hitless. Torriente also added a double off Ruth himself, driving in six runs as Almendares beat the Giants 11 to 4. It wasn't until Ruth's seventh game that he finally provided the Cuban fans with a home run. The Babe ended up hitting well for the series anyway (.345/.525/.828), and the Giants won 9, lost 4, and tied 4, despite only outscoring their opponents 69 to 62.

The Giants left Havana in mid-November, and their place was taken by the Atlantic City Bacharach Giants of the Negro leagues. The team's trip was organized by its secretary, Edward B. Lamar, for many years a well-known promoter in black baseball circles and founder of the Cuban X-Giants. Lamar was actually the instigator of the first trips to Cuba by black American teams in the 20th century, sending his X-Giants to Havana several times in the 1900s. For this trip the Bacharachs brought the core of their regular team, captain and ace pitcher Dick Redding, shortstop Dick Lundy, pitcher Red Ryan, and catcher Julio Rojo, and added superstar Oscar Charleston and infielder Morten "Specs" Clark from the Indianapolis ABCs, slugger Charlie Blackwell and infielder Joe Hewitt from the St. Louis Giants, and a trio of stars from the Hilldale Club, catcher Louis Santop, spitballer Phil Cockrell, and fancy-fielding first baseman Toussaint Allen. Oliver Marcell, the Bacharachs' star third baseman, also applied for a passport, but for some reason did not make the trip.

Guided by Cuban Stars manager Tinti Molina, the Bacharachs played a (pretty unsuccessful) six-game series with Habana and Almendares, then it was decided to enter them as the third club in the regular Cuban League season.  The league used a split-season format. On December 26 Almendares player-manager Dolf Luque argued with the umpire during a game with Habana and pulled his team off the field, and then Almendares refused to show up for a game the next day against the Bacharachs. Luque was suspended and Almendares forfeited both games, but the Blues, led by Cheo Hernández (4-1, 1.62), shortstop Pelayo Chacón (.321/.418/.410), and left fielder Merito Acosta (.281/.410/.406), managed to overcome these problems to win the first half. In addition to his three-homer game against the Giants, center fielder Torriente (.306/.398/.482) set a Cuban League record by legging out three triples in one game on January 12.

The Bacharachs couldn't really get untracked, and lagged well behind in last place, despite the efforts of Charleston (.471/.514/.500), Blackwell (.367/.472/.433), Clark (.350), and Santop  (.343). They finished the first half with a 5-11 record (including the forfeit win over Almendares). After losing the opening game of the second half, the Bacharachs dropped out of the league. Inspired by second baseman Bienvenido "Hooks" Jiménez (.310/.412/.425), infielder/outfielder Manuel Cueto (.283/.383/.359), and pitchers Oscar Tuero (5-3, 1.81) and José Acosta (5-2, 1.94), Habana won six out of the eight remaining games to take the second half title and set up a best-of-three championship series.

In the playoffs, the Reds spotted Almendares one win (a three-hit shutout by Luque), then won the last two to take the pennant.

1920 passport photos for Dick Lundy, Babe Ruth, and Oscar Charleston.

luther farrell

Luther Farrell is probably best-known for the rain-shortened, 7-inning no-hitter he pitched against the Chicago American Giants in the 1927 Negro League World Series.  His career, though, was interesting beyond that.  He emerged into the blackball world as an inconsistent southpaw with control problems, playing mostly for Midwestern teams (though he did briefly go east with the Lincoln Giants in 1919).  After a couple of seasons in the Negro National League, he spent most of 1922 through 1924 with Gilkerson’s Union Giants, before finally coming into his own as a hybrid pitcher/outfielder for the Bacharach Giants, helping them to two pennants.  The New York Amsterdam News (September 29, 1926, p. 13) described him this way: 

“Farrell is a semi-converted hurler who failed to make the grade with other clubs in the league as a hurler but has shown to a big advantage with the Bees and has hit the ball so hard and timely that he has been stationed in right field when not taking his turn in the box.”

But Farrell remains elusive, especially for a relatively well-known player.  In part this is because he played for the Bacharachs, an Atlantic City team that was sometimes less than well-covered by the black press.  There are very few Bacharachs photos in general; I’ve found only a couple of pictures of Farrell, relatively poor images from contemporary newspapers. 

And tracking Farrell down in official records presents a bit of a problem, too, largely because he changed his name in mid-career.  W. Rollo Wilson wrote about him in the Pittsburgh Courier (May 23, 1925, p. 12):

“Luther Farrell has been sent to the Lincoln Giants by Ed Bolden of Hilldale.  Farrell is the bimbo who pitched for Joe Green’s Chicago Giants some years ago under the name and title ‘Luther’.  He is a crooked arm hurler and swings a naughty bat.”

In 1923, the Chicago Defender mentions “Luther Farrell, [a] pitcher who finished last season with Gilkerson’s Union Giants,” among the many young players Rube Foster brought to spring training with the American Giants.  This is the earliest example I could find of the name “Luther Farrell.”  Before this, he usually appears in box scores and articles simply as “Luther.”

However—through the late winter and spring of 1920, the St. Louis Argus made several mentions of “Al Luther,” the new lefthanded pitcher on the St. Louis Giants, and in April remarked that Farrell and another player, an infielder named Lee Hill, “come from Dayton, Ohio.” 

In the 1920 U.S. census, enumerated in January 1920, one “Alander Luther,” 23 years old and working as a chauffeur, can be found in Dayton:

Alander Luther was, according to the census, born in Pennsylvania.  And in 1917 “Alaner L. Luther” registered for the draft in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania:


Alaner Luther, it turns out, was born not in Pennsylvania, but rather in Bartow, Florida, on July 13, 1896.

Now let’s jump ahead 16 years.  Luther Farrell was pitching for the New York Black Yankees, and in the off-season had played winter ball in Puerto Rico.  Here’s a passenger list showing him returning to New York on March 27, 1933, along with a number of other black ballplayers (Connie Rector, George Scales, Clint Thomas, Dave “Showboat” Thomas, Ted Trent, and Harry Williams):

According to the passenger list, Luther Farrell was born on July 13, 1900, in Bartow, Florida.  The birthday and birthplace are the same—only the years are different, and this is not unusual.

Atlantic City directories of the late 1920s show Farrell living there:

1927

1928

1930

He appeared in the 1930 census, living in Atlantic City, listed as born in Florida, and as a “ball player”:

By the 1940s he and his second wife, Helen, were moving back and forth between Atlantic City and Miami, Florida (they show up in Miami in 1942; Atlantic City in 1946; Miami again in 1947).   One suspects some kind of seasonal employment, spending winters in Miami, summers in Jersey.

Finally, the Florida Death Index contains an entry for Luther Alner Farrell, black, who died in December of 1956 in Dade County (Miami), the middle name creating a link between the earliest record I can associate with Farrell (the World War I card for “Alaner L. Luther”) and the last.

All sorts of questions remain.  Was he born Alaner Luther, or did he decide to use his first name Luther as his last name for a few years, for some unexplained reason?  If he changed his name to Farrell, why did he do that?

I couldn’t say.  I’ve been unable to locate any trace of anyone with the last name “Luther” living in Bartow, Florida, in the early twentieth century.  But I did find this Bartow family in the 1900 census:

At first I thought this was clearly Alaner Farrell—perhaps Luther was an unused given name at first, one he later used as both a last name and a first name.  But it turned out not to be the case.  The twin brothers Allie Thomas Ferrell and Arda Ferrell lived on in Polk County, Florida, for many years, at least through the 1940 census, while Luther Farrell was pursuing his baseball career in the Midwest and on the east coast. They can easily be traced in various census and draft records, and Allie Ferrell was clearly not Luther Alaner Farrell.  But it’s hard not to wonder if there might have been a connection of some kind.

the mother of all world series comebacks

Kevin Johnson’s got an article up at Seamheads.com about the 1927 World Series between the Bacharach Giants and the Chicago American Giants.  This is the first part.

1920/21 bacharach giants in cuba: passport applications

I’ve been able to find U.S. passport applications for thirteen Negro Leaguers—the complete North American roster of the “Bacharach Giants” aggregation that played in Cuba during the 1920/21 season (both American Series and regular Cuban League).  These applications have enabled me to fully identify two of these players—Willis “Pud” Flournoy and James York—for, I believe, the first time.  I’ll put up a separate post on Flournoy soon.

Before 1916, U.S. law did not require American citizens traveling abroad to carry passports, though some countries did require them.  An executive order in 1916 mandated passports, and this was made law by Congress in 1918.  The requirement was lifted in 1921, not to be reinstated until 1941.  So, unless the country of destination required passports, Americans did not have to get them before 1916, or from 1921 to 1941. 

The one foreign nation Negro Leaguers were apt to visit was Cuba, which evidently did not require passports for entry.  So we have only the narrow window of 1916 to 1921 to find Negro Leaguers’ passport applications.  As it happens, the 1920 Bacharachs were the only Negro League team to visit Cuba during these years.

One thing we learn about this 1920 team: it is often linked to Rube Foster (despite featuring none of his players at the time), but I’m not sure he had anything to do with it.  For one thing, he probably didn’t accompany the team, as no passport application for him could be found. 

For another, the team’s organizer appears to have been Edward B. Lamar, former manager/owner of the Cuban X Giants, and promoter of that team’s trips to Cuba in the 1900s.  Lamar provides affidavits swearing to the identity of every player but Toussaint Allen (see below) and Philip Cockrell, who apparently had forgotten to apply, and had to send his application right before leaving from Key West, with instructions for it to be sent to him in Havana.  Somebody typed up his application for him, and misunderstood his name to be “Phillip Cochran.”

I’m no handwriting expert, but with the exception of Cockrell’s application (and maybe the signatures), the forms all seem to be filled out by Lamar.

Here are the photos of the Bacharach players; I’ve never seen most of these (or possibly any of them) before.

Toussaint Allen
* Born: 7 June 1896, Atlanta, Georgia (WWI draft card has 7 June 1895)
* Father: Riley Allen (dec’d), born in Atlanta
* Height: 5’9”
* Affidavit attesting to Allen’s identity signed by Richard Redding—though Redding’s World War I draft card signed with his mark.

Charles Blackwell
* Born: 12 December 1894, Brandenburg, Kentucky (matches WWI draft card)
* Father: Charles Blackwell, born in Shelbyville, Kentucky, currently residing in Brandenburg
* Height: 5’7”

Oscar McKinley Charleston
* Born: 14 October 1896, Indianapolis, Indiana
* Father: Thomas Charleston, born in Charleston, South Carolina, currently residing in Indianapolis
* Height: 5’8” (does not match Riley, who has him as six feet tall, or his WWI draft card, which describes him vaguely as “tall”)

Morten Avery Clark
* Born: 19 December 1889, Bristol, Tennessee (matches WWI draft card)
* Father: Joseph Henry Clark, born in Richmond, Virginia, currently residing in Los Angeles, California
* Height: 5’9”
* The middle name “Avery” is new information (his WWI card has the middle initial “A.”).  The form also indicates that Clark was in France with the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) during the war.
* Now we can see his “gafas blancas” for ourselves. As in 1915, Figueredo identifies him as “Dell Clark.”

Philip Cockrell (“Phillip Cochran”)
* Born: 9 July 1895, Augusta, Georgia
* Father: “Wm. Cochran” (William Cockrell), born in Georgia, currently residing in Philadelphia.
* Height: 5’11”

Willis Flournoy
* Born: 9 August 1895, Monticello, Georgia (WWI draft card has 9 August 1894)
* Father: William Flournoy, born in 1855, currently residing in Monticello.
* Height: 6’5”
* The birthdate and place is, I believe, brand-new information; more on him in another post.

Joseph Hewitt
* Born: 7 August 1885, Nashville, Tennessee (date matches WWI draft card)
* Father: Price Hewitt (dec’d), born in West Virginia
* Height: 5’5”
* The birthplace is new information (1920 census record has him born in Alabama).  His middle name was William (WWI draft card; he was nicknamed “Joe Bill”).

Louis Santop Loftin
* Born: 17 January 1889, Fort Worth, Texas (matches WWI draft card; Riley & HOF have 17 January 1890, Tyler, Texas)
* Father: Andrew Loftin, currently residing in Tyler, Texas
* Height: 6’2”

Richard Lundy
* Born: 10 July 1898, Jacksonville, Florida (matches WWI draft card)
* Father: Richard Lundy, born and currently residing in Jacksonville, Florida
* Height: 5’11”

Oliver Marcelle
* Born: 1 June 1895, New Orleans, Louisiana (WWI draft card has 21 June 1895)
* Father: Daniel Marcelle, born in Thibodaux, Louisiana, currently residing in New Orleans
* Height: 5’10”
* His World War I draft card is signed “Marcell,” with no “e.”  Here the signature is unclear, though the form definitely says “Marcelle.”

Richard Redding
* Born: 15 April 1893, Atlanta, Georgia (WWI draft card has 14 April 1893)
* Father: Richard Redding, born in 1869 and currently residing in Atlanta
* Height: 6’1”
* Form is signed, though Redding’s World War I draft card is signed with his mark.

Merven John Ryan
* Born: 11 July 1897, Brooklyn, New York (matches WWI draft card)
* Father: John Ryan (dec’d), born in Brooklyn.
* Height: 5’11”
* The middle name “John” is new information (WWI card has middle initial “J.”).

James Henry York
* Born: 11 July 1895, St. Peters, Pennsylvania
* Father: Wallace Jacob York, born in Altoona, currently residing in Coatesville, Pennsylvania
* Height: 6’1/4”
* Middle name, birth date and place are all new information.

home run johnson & the bacharach giants

A hitherto unknown episode in the late career of Grant Johnson.  From the New York Age (April 17, 1920), in an article about the Bacharach Giants’ spring training camp in Jacksonville, Florida:

The minister of the 2nd Baptist Church was about the most surprised citizen in Florida when he discovered many of the Bacharachs’ players occupying pews in his place of worship.  It seems as though the suggestion to attend church was offered by “Home Run Johnson.”  Capt. Dick, to show that he was no more heathen than the “home-run king,” agreed to accompany him.  Many of the other players followed suit.  The Bacharach team was already very popular in Jacksonville, but nothing could have brought them more into the public’s good graces.

“Capt. Dick” was the club’s new player-manager, Dick Redding (and the Age really liked this nickname, which it said had been coined by the players).  The 45-year-old Johnson was probably not in the Bacharachs’ camp primarily to exude holiness; the team’s hotshot young shortstop, Dick Lundy, had failed to report, holding out for higher pay.  Unfortunately, Johnson couldn’t give the Bacharachs much bargaining leverage.  In its report of an early-season doubleheader against the Tesreau Bears, the Age described his performance thusly:

All through both games Home Run Johnson had shown that he was no short stop even though he was stationed in that section of the garden….It must be said that the Bears were helped along considerably by the costly errors of a few of the Bacharach men and by some questionable decisions.  Principal among the fumblers was Home Run Johnson who seemed altogether out of place at short.  He was also largely at fault for String Bean’s mishap in the first encounter and threw away the last game when Capt. Dick had it all sewed up. (New York Age, May 8, 1920)

By the time of another doubleheader a couple of weeks later, this time against Guy Empey’s Treat ‘Em Roughs, Lundy was at his accustomed spot as shortstop.  No mention was made of Johnson, who had presumably returned to the Buffalo Stars of Pittsburgh.  None of the standard reference books today lists his brief and inglorious stay with the Bacharachs.