Prior to the 1915 season, the American Giants lost two of their most important players: veteran infielder Bill Monroe and young pitcher Bill Lindsay, the “Kansas Cyclone” (who was actually from Missouri, though he played for the Kansas City, Kansas, Giants). In keeping with the blog’s recent necrological turn, here is an account of Lindsay’s career and funeral from the Indianapolis Freeman (September 12, 1914).
One of Lindsay’s pallbearers was Bill Monroe, who would himself pass away within about six months. I don’t know when Lindsay played his final game, but the last game he pitched that I could find in the Freeman was a 10-1 victory over a team called the New York Stars or the Brooklyn All-Stars on July 13, 1914; he started, but switched places with left fielder Jude Gans, probably after the game was in hand. On July 20, Lindsay pinch-hit for Pete Booker in the ninth against the Schenectady Mohawk Giants. On August 2 he played right field against “Young Cy” Young and a Benton Harbor, Michigan, semipro team. In less than a month, he was dead.
According to the Freeman (September 5, 1914), Bill Lindsay passed away on Tuesday, September 1, at Provident Hospital in Chicago. I couldn’t find any mention in the Defender or Freeman of Lindsay becoming ill in the weeks before his death, nor any commentary about him missing from the lineup. The Freeman piece doesn’t mention a cause of death; Holway (Complete Book, 101) says it was tuberculosis.
There is, of course, no World War I draft card for Bill Lindsay, but I was able to find his brother, Robert “Frog” Lindsay, a shortstop with several Kansas City area teams in the 1910s:
Note that Robert Lindsay signed his name with an “a” (many contemporary sources, like the article above, use “Lindsey”). And here is the whole Lindsay family, of Lexington, Missouri, in the 1900 census:
There are eight sons and one daughter, with “Willie” the youngest, born in June 1891. Since Robert’s birth date here (March 1885) matches his draft card, the date is probably accurate for his younger brother. The Freeman article mentions “nine boys in the family”; Maria (or “Mariah,” as given on the draft card) Lindsay is listed as having ten children, all living (the “10s” in the last two columns), so there may be another son no longer living at home; also, 15-year-old Oscar Parker, Peter Lindsay’s nephew, is shown here living in the same household.
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