Agate Type

overestimating the fog: bullet rogan and joe williams

Joe Posnanski has a great series (currently on hiatus) listing his version of the 100  greatest players in baseball history, a list that (as you might expect) includes several Negro leaguers. I’ve enjoyed these pieces quite a bit. But I wanted to respond to a few statements Pos makes (in passing) in a couple of the Negro league entries—not to be a jerk (or at least I hope it doesn’t come off like that), but to emphasize a few things about the Negro leagues that I think aren’t too well-known, even to initiates.

In his entry on Bullet Rogan, Posnanski writes that Rogan “played the bulk of his professional career in the 1920s, before there was even moderate coverage of the Negro Leagues…”

You hear this, or something like it, a lot. I guess the assumption is that everything improves through time, that the farther back in history you go the worse the records are, that the Negro leagues got better and better known through the years, and that the era of Josh Gibson and Buck Leonard and Monte Irvin in the 1940s must be the best-documented part of black baseball history.

In fact, though, the 1920s were, by far, the most intensively covered era in Negro league history. True, nearly all the substantive writing about them was published in the black press. But there was quite a bit of it, at least compared to other eras, with several nationally-distributed newspapers (the Chicago Defender, Pittsburgh Courier, Baltimore Afro-American) along with a number of more regional or local papers (New York Age, Kansas City Call, Philadelphia Tribune, etc.) devoting multiple pages per weekly issue to sports, which during the summer basically meant professional baseball. There were a number of columnists who dealt solely or mostly with black baseball. The Defender and Courier both tried to act as news clearing houses, so to speak, for the Negro leagues, printing coverage and box scores for both the major black leagues and the major independent clubs.

And beyond the black press, the mainstream (white) daily papers in most league cities regularly published box scores for Negro league games—which leads me to this passage, a little later in the Rogan essay: after quoting some of Rogan’s season statistics from Shades of Glory, Posnanski remarks, “But the numbers are foggy. Everything from the Negro Leagues in that time, sadly, is foggy.”

On the contrary: the 1920s is also the best-documented decade of pre-integration black baseball history in terms of box scores and statistics derived from them, by a long shot. For example: we have box scores for 78 out of 79 Monarchs games against NNL opponents in 1920; 100 out of 101 in 1921; 84 out of 85 in 1922; 98 out of 98 in 1923; 85 out of 89 in 1924 (including the World Series); and 76 out of 80 in 1928. That’s a total of 521 out of 532 games in those six seasons, or 98 percent. The numbers we’ve got for Rogan in those years are pretty good, quality-wise. And there is every reason to believe that the remaining seasons from the 1920s—1925-27, 1929—are quite similar, as far as coverage goes.

Moreover, the box scores from the 1920s are, generally speaking, more carefully compiled and complete than the box scores of any other decade.

So, at least in terms of NNL games, the numbers from the 1920s are anything but “foggy.” Compared to the major leagues, yes, they are a little fuzzy, but only a little. It wasn’t until the 1930s that the amount of coverage in the black press started to slip, and that both daily and black weekly papers started cutting down on the number of Negro league box scores they printed.

In the entry on Joe Williams, Posnanski writes that “Smokey Joe Williams or Cyclone Joe Williams — he was called both — was born at some point between 1874 and 1885, the exactly year remains hopelessly lost.”

In fact, Williams was born on April 6 in either 1885, 1886, or 1887, in or near Seguin, Texas. Both his World War I and World War II draft cards (signed by Williams) have April 6, 1886. Williams’s entry in the 1900 U.S. census says April 1886. According to John Holway, Williams’s marriage license says April 6, 1885, though later on the same page he says it reads April 6, 1886. He also reports that Williams’s death certificate puts his birth date as April 6, 1887. We don’t have a certain birth record (and it wouldn’t be surprising if one was not made), but all evidence points to a birth date between 1885 and 1887.

Posnanski continues, writing of Williams’s career, that “[t]here is no earned run average to judge — nobody was keeping track of errors — so run average is used.”

Actually, everybody was keeping track of errors during the career of Joe Williams. Nearly every baseball box score printed in those days included errors. They did not keep track of earned runs, at least not for Negro league games—though these can be figured using game accounts, or estimated using errors and passed balls recorded in box scores.

And finally, from the nitpicking files: Posnanski writes that “…stories of the way [Williams] would unwind that body and unleash his fastball still spark the imagination. People would say it was like facing a Cyclone — which is how Williams got his second nickname, Cyclone Joe Williams.”

Okay, okay, this is just a hobby horse of mine. But I can’t resist. “Cyclone” was Wiliams’s first and primary nickname. “Smokey Joe” didn’t appear until the late 1910s, and didn’t become prevalent until the mid-1920s, when Williams moved to the Homestead Grays, and the Pittsburgh Courier undertook a concerted PR campaign to associate him with Pittsburgh, the “Smoky City.”

Anyway, none of this is to detract from Posnanski’s writing. I just wanted to make the point that even some of the most sympathetic and best-informed accounts of the Negro leagues sometimes traffic in exaggerated notions of the fogginess and unknowability of black baseball history, despite the availability of meticulous and well-documented research. We can do better than that.

NOTE: For those who don’t recognize it, the title of this post is a reference to this article by Bill James.

the rogans of sumner county, tennessee

A couple of months ago I was trying to determine whether or not Oscar Rogan, a lefthanded semipro pitcher in Indiana in the late 1910s, was related to Wilber “Bullet” Rogan, the Hall of Fame pitcher for the 25th Infantry Wreckers and Kansas City Monarchs.  I was able to establish that Bullet Rogan’s family history could be traced back to Sumner County, Tennessee, which was where Oscar Rogan was born.  Going back to the 1870 census, however, I couldn’t find any solid evidence showing whether or how their two families were related.  And then we run into the slavery line.  Prior to the Civil War, the census did not record the names of individual slaves.  The slave schedules merely listed the owner’s name along with only the slaves’ ages. 

That doesn’t mean you can’t figure out anything in the slavery era.  The 1870 census shows 49 African Americans surnamed “Rogan” living in Sumner County, along with 10 white Rogans. In the 1860 census, Francis Rogan of Sumner County owned 71 slaves (and William Rogan 5 more).  In the 1850 census Francis Rogan owned 57 slaves.  It seems very likely that the black Rogans of post-war Sumner County were largely the same people (or their descendants), meaning that the Rogan name can be traced back to the Francis Rogan family. 

The Rogans were major landowners and the most prominent Catholics in an otherwise heavily Protestant area; some of the buildings on their property still exist (including the original stone cabin built around 1800 by Hugh Rogan, Francis’s father and an Irish immigrant).  You can read about their slaves and their families here—though it appears that the researcher hasn’t realized that a descendant of the Rogan slaves became a Hall of Fame ballplayer.

The Francis Rogan house (right; 1827) and Hugh Rogan house (1800), from the Middle Tennessee State University site on the Rogan family.

Let me stop here to point out one historical celebrity among the Rogans of Sumner County, someone who’s probably related to Bullet and Oscar: John William “Bud” Rogan (not to be confused with Bullet’s grandfather, also named John Rogan).  Bud Rogan never stopped growing during his life, eventually reaching the height of 8 feet, nine inches before his death at the age of 37 (roughly) as a result of complications from his condition.  At one point he weighed as much as 300 pounds, though he had wasted away to 175 by the time he died. 

Bullet Rogan stood 5’7” and weighed 160 pounds; Oscar Rogan was almost exactly the same size, 5’6 ½”, 160.  According to military records, their grandfathers were, respectively, 5’ 4 ¼” and 5’6”.  The Rogans were fairly small men, even for the times.  And yet they may have been related to the second-tallest human being in recorded history.

Bud Rogan

Anyway: Bullet’s father, Richard Rogan, was born in either 1862 or 1863 (the 1900 census says March 1863).  It’s certainly possible that he was born into slavery, as the Emancipation Proclamation (January 1, 1863) did not cover Tennessee, which was already largely in Union hands by that time, and the pro-unionist state government did not outlaw slavery until it ratified the Thirteenth Amendment in April, 1865.  So I can’t say for sure whether Bullet was the son of former slaves, or the grandson. 

But Tennessee’s military governor, future president Andrew Johnson, freed his own slaves on August 8, 1863.  It’s possible that Francis Rogan followed a similar path, and emancipated his slaves around this time.  Union forces occupied Sumner County in February, 1862, and the county seat, Gallatin, became an important logistics hub for federal forces (and target of Confederate raids).  Here, on October 1, 1863, six men named Rogan enlisted in the 14th United States Colored Infantry—including both John (aged 39; Bullet’s grandfather) and Wesley (38; Oscar’s), as well as Benjamin (25), Jacob (25), Page (24), and Titus (18).  A seventh, 22-year-old Clinton Rogan, joined on November 1. 

Although I still have no idea what their actual relationship was, it’s easy to imagine the two older Rogans as brothers.  John spent the war as a cook for Company A, while Wesley was a cook in Company D.  During their service the 14th Colored Infantry served as garrison troops and railroad guards and saw action at the Second Battle of Dalton, Georgia (August 1864), the siege of Decatur, Alabama (October 1864), and the decisive Battle of Nashville (December  1864). Young Clinton Rogan died of “bilious pneumonia” at the post hospital in Chattanooga on December 2, 1865, but John and Wesley and, as far as I can tell, the rest of the Sumner County Rogans survived the war.

In the end we still don’t know exactly how Oscar Rogan and Bullet Rogan were related, though I’m pretty sure someone out there (particularly someone in the Rogan family) knows a lot more about all this.

 

oscar rogan

Several years ago Todd Peterson sent me this box score, from the May 7, 1917, Fort Wayne (Indiana) Daily News, which showed a pitcher named Rogan and outfielders named Carr and Hawkins playing for the Fort Wayne Colored Giants.

(Ft. Wayne Daily News, May 7, 1917, p. 3)

At first glance it seemed like a real possibility these players were Bullet Rogan, Lemuel Hawkins, and George Carr.  They had all played for the Los Angeles White Sox in the late 1910s and would join the Kansas City Monarchs in 1920, and Rogan and Hawkins had played for the 25th Infantry Wreckers.  And Rogan was on furlough from the Army during the first half of 1917, during which he played for the All-Nations club and Kansas City Giants.  It seemed too much for a coincidence, yet it was odd all the same: what were these guys doing playing for a little-known, surely semiprofessional club in Indiana?  I’d never known Carr to play anywhere but on the west coast until 1920.  And why were they getting pounded by a seemingly undistinguished white semipro club?

First, I checked out the Ft. Wayne papers for the whole year of 1917, and found quite a bit of coverage of the Colored Giants, including various short reports on the team as it was being assembled in April, along with box scores for other games.  This Rogan, it turned out, was reported to be a southpaw from the Louisville White Sox (Bullet Rogan, of course, was righthanded); Carr was an “ex-Lima  [Ohio] Giant,” called “little Carr, the bow-legged center fielder” (Ft. Wayne Sentinel, June 4), which isn’t a very good description of George Carr; and Hawkins was supposed to be a “local star.”  If Dupee and Wilson, the Colored Giants’ owners, had hired a trio from the west coast they certainly would have publicized that fact, rather than saying they were from Louisville, Lima, and Ft. Wayne.

Carr could be John W. Carr, who played for the Dayton Marcos in the late 1910s, though I can’t say for sure.  Hawkins of Ft. Wayne I don’t know, though there were a couple of African American men named Hawkins who registered for the draft in Ft. Wayne in June, 1917.  As for Rogan: only two black men named Rogan registered for the draft in Indiana, and one of them resided in Ft. Wayne: Oscar Rogan, born March 27, 1891, in Gallatin, Sumner County, Tennessee.

Here’s Oscar Rogan’s WW2 draft card as well, which is a bit easier to read:

The Sumner County, Tennessee, birthplace really jumped out at me, because that’s precisely where Bullet Rogan’s family was from before they moved to Oklahoma in 1890.  Could the two pitchers have been related?

Here’s Oscar and two brothers, Edward and John, living with their widowed father Henry Rogan in Sumner County in 1900:

And here’s the young Charles Wilber “Bullet” Rogan, living with his father and a boarder in Oklahoma City in the 1900 U.S. Census:

We can find Richard Rogan, Bullet’s father, with the rest of his family, living in Oklahoma City, in the Oklahoma territorial census in 1890 (before Wilber Rogan was born):

The same family can be found back in Sumner County, Tennessee, in the 1880 census, with one interesting addition: a brother named Henry (the name of Oscar Rogan’s father), who wasn’t in Oklahoma with the rest of the family in 1890.  The ages are a little different, though; according to the 1900 census Henry, Oscar’s father, was born in 1852, which would make him 28 in 1880, while this Henry is only 22.

But then, when we follow the family of John Rogan, Bullet Rogan’s grandfather, back to the 1870 census, in the midst of Reconstruction, Henry is gone again:

To recap, here’s the Rogan family from 1870 to 1890, with their reported ages in the three census records, 1870 U.S., 1880 U.S., 1890 Oklahoma:

                       1870        1880        1890
John Rogan (father)      46         56         70
Sarah Rogan (mother)     33         44
Thomas                   13         24
Charles H.               13                    30
Henry                               22
Richard                   8         19         27
Laura                     3
Martha                    9 months  10         20
Frank                     8         18
John                      4         16
Sarah                               14
Maria                               10

It seems likely that Charles H. Rogan and Henry Rogan were really the same person, Charles Henry Rogan, and that he moved with his father and most of his siblings to Oklahoma Territory in 1890 or before.  By 1890, Charles had a wife, Melissa, and two children of his own, Walter and Mary.  It’s a little confusing, but subsequent census records seem to show that Charles Henry Rogan and his family continued in Oklahoma to 1900 and after (and he alternated between his first and middle names), and he would therefore not be the Henry who was Oscar Rogan’s father.

There was another black man named Henry Rogan in Sumner County, though.  He was born in Sumner County in 1858, apparently lived there his whole life, and died on April 6, 1925.  He first shows up in the 1880 census.  He was aged 18, rather than 28 as Oscar’s father would have been (based on the 1900 census), and he was living with an aunt, Idia Harris, who was still living next door to the family in 1900 (see above):

Then, if we go back to 1870, we can find him, living with his parents, Wesley and Patsy Rogan, in Sumner County:

So was Wesley Rogan, Oscar’s grandfather, related to John Rogan, Bullet’s grandfather?  The 1870 census shows 49 African Americans named Rogan in Sumner County (along with 10 whites).  Unfortunately, this is the point where slavery draws a curtain across black history, and it can becomes very, very difficult to trace individuals, at least in most easily accessible records.  In 1860 and before, the census recorded the numbers of slaves (this was necessary because of the Constitution’s three-fifths clause), but did not give their names.

 This post is already more than long enough, so I’ll pick up the story tomorrow.

UPDATE See this post for more on the Rogans of Sumner County, Tennessee.

schorling park, chicago: may 27, 1923

 Here, in a wonderfully high-res scan from Robert Edward Auctions, is a panoramic photograph of a 1923 Chicago American Giants-Kansas City Monarchs game at Schorling Park.

(click to enlarge)
 
You will recognize this photograph from one of my posts a couple of years ago—it appeared, with the same captions and insets (the box with the series scores on the left, the photo of Rube Foster on the right), in a 1925 book edited by John Taitt called Souvenir of Negro Progress: Chicago, 1779-1925, and can be found (in a lower-res version) at the New York Public Library’s Digital Gallery.

Contrary to the description on the auction page, the Negro National League did not hold playoffs between the top two teams from 1920 through 1923.  The pennant winner was simply the team with the best record at the end of the season.  So this game was not part of a championship series.  It was, in fact, a normal regular-season contest, held on Sunday, May 27, 1923, with over 17,000 in attendance.  It was so crowded they put up temporary grandstands—one of which, holding 1500 people, collapsed at the end of the seventh inning.  Amazingly only 28 people suffered serious injuries, and the game was resumed.

 
(Chicago Daily Tribune, May 28, 1923, page 3)

It was a “great game,” as the Defender said; here’s the box score and play-by-play, if you want to check it out.

 (Chicago Defender, June 2, 1923, page 10) 

This was game 2 of a four-game sweep by the American Giants that put them in first place.  These were the dates of the games:

May 26:  American Giants 3, Monarchs 2

May 27:  American Giants 5, Monarchs 4

May 28:  American Giants 3 (or 6; see below), Monarchs 2

May 29:  American Giants 7, Monarchs 4

The score of game 3 is listed in the box on the left side of the photograph as 3-2 American Giants.  The Chicago Defender agreed, printing a box score that showed it finishing 3-2.  The Chicago Tribune, however, gave the score as 6-2 Chicago.  Which score was correct?

Both, it turns out, depending on which rule you apply about walk-off home runs.  With the bases loaded, two out, and the score tied 2-2 in the bottom of the tenth, the Giants’ Harry Kenyon smashed a grand slam home run over the center field fence.  By the rule that pertained in the major leagues prior to 1920, teams that won in the bottom of the last inning could only win by one run.  So a batter who struck a game-winning hit was only awarded the hit necessary to get the winning run over the plate.  In Kenyon’s case, the Giants only needed one run to win, so under this rule he would be credited only with a single, enough to get Cristóbal Torriente from third to home.

Even though that rule had been eliminated by the major leagues in 1920, the Chicago Defender applied it to the May 28 game, and credited Kenyon only with the single (and only Torriente with the first run scored in the inning), giving the score as 3 to 2.  The Tribune, however, applied the rule in its modern form, and credited Kenyon with his home run, gave runs scored to Jim Brown, John Beckwith, and Kenyon, and put the score at 6 to 2.

(Chicago Defender, June 2, 1923, page 10)

 

(Chicago Daily Tribune, May 29, 1923, page 21)

“bulletrogan problems”

From an email received by my wife, who works at Duke University:

Date: February 7, 2011 8:51:12 AM EST
Subject: Bulletrogan problems this morning

We’re getting reports of mapped drives not working this morning.  It looks like Bulletrogan restarted itself somewhere around 4 AM and is hung at a boot screen, possibly because of a problem disk in the system drive array.  More details as they come in.

To explain: There is apparently a Negro league fan in Duke’s IT department, as they’ve named one of their servers “Bulletrogan.”

I hope they’ve got Josemendez or Rubecurrie warming up in the bullpen...

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)

how old was bullet rogan?

Here’s an interesting comparison (link sent to me by Fred Brillhart) of three Kansas City Royals greats to their Monarchs equivalents (with a not-so-surprise ending).  The account of Bullet Rogan’s career comes mostly from the Wikipedia entry—which, incidentally, I wrote!  It’s my only (recent) foray into Wikipedia land, and I tried very hard to conform to their guidelines.  So there’s no “original research”—everything is based on secondary sources (with 42 footnotes)—though unavoidably the article is guided by my interpretation of the sources.  One perhaps controversial decision I made was to place Rogan’s birthdate firmly in 1893 instead of 1889. 

Although this might seem at first like a minor detail, the difference of four years could strongly affect any assessment of his career.  Rogan joined the Monarchs in July 1920; his dominance of the Negro National League really got started in 1921, and lasted more or less through the 1928 season.  If he was born on July 28, 1889, as some sources have it, he would have started his NNL career at age 30 (almost 31), had his best years from age 31 through 38.  Since most players do not peak in their thirties, it would seem highly reasonable, indeed likely, that these were not really the best years of his baseball career, and that he was even better in the Army in his twenties.

If, on the other hand, he was 26 when he joined the Monarchs, and he enjoyed his best years with them from age 27 through 34, it looks a lot more likely that available records pretty much capture how good he was at his peak.

Anyway, since a couple of people have asked me about it, I thought I’d go ahead and outline the evidence so you can make up your own mind.

The main source for Rogan being born in 1893 instead of 1889 is Phil Dixon’s book The Monarchs 1920-1938, which is the closest there is to a book-length biography of Rogan, and is the most wide-ranging collection of research on Rogan and the Monarchs of the 1920s and early 1930s that exists.  (Phil is publishing a new edition with McFarland, which I don’t think is out yet.)

Phil states unequivocally that Rogan was born on July 28, 1893, in Oklahoma City, and his account of Rogan’s early years supports that birth date.  Rogan’s first professional or semiprofessional team was Fred Palace’s Colts, a team of 18 and 19-year-olds, which he joined in 1911.  Had he been born in 1889, he would have been 21 and 22 during the 1911 baseball season.  It’s difficult to believe that a talent of Rogan’s caliber would have first appeared with a team of teenagers at age 21, especially when the established Kansas City, Kansas, Giants, a professional team that had defeated Rube Foster’s Leland Giants in a 1909 series, were right there in Rogan’s home town.  Incidentally, according to Phil Dick Whitworth first joined the Colts at the same time in 1911—and he was born on August 28, 1894 or 1895.

Moreover, Phil’s account implies (though it doesn’t exactly state outright) that Rogan joined the Army right out of high school—either before graduation or directly after.  He quotes a family friend of the Rogans, Orrin Murray, saying that “Rogan moved his age up by several years, left school and joined the army” (p. 8).  He wasn’t the only future Negro Leaguer during this era who did this: Oscar Charleston, Jasper Washington, and probably Heavy Johnson also added years to their ages when enlisting.  The first two were only 15 when they joined up, and claimed to be 18; Johnson was already 18, but claimed to be 21.  While I don’t know much about this, I’d guess that you normally had to be 18 to enlist at all, but that until you were 21 you needed to have a parent or guardian’s permission. 

Rogan enlisted on October 19, 1911, reporting his age as 22 years and two months, which would be consistent with a July 28, 1889, birthdate.  I haven’t seen other military records, his World War II draft card, or his Social Security records, but it would not be surprising if the 1889 date were used in those as well.  The 1889 date also appears on a passenger list arriving in Los Angeles from a Royal Giants’ tour in Asia, which indicates that Rogan probably used his “military age” on his passport.

On the other hand, census records (with one exception) are more consistent with an 1893 birthdate.  The most important is probably the 1900 census, showing the Rogans still living in Oklahoma City, and giving a July 1893 birthdate for young Charles W. Rogan.

Here are the Rogans in the 1910 census, now living in Kansas City, Kansas. (Note that the children are all said to have been born in Tennessee.)

The one exception is the 1920 census, where, as Patrick Rock pointed out to me some time ago, Rogan is double-entered.  He appears both at Camp Stephen D. Little in Nogales, Arizona, and at Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis, Missouri.  He was probably physically (and temporarily) present at one of the locations, while at the other the census record was compiled from official records of some sort.  Anyway, at Jefferson Barracks he is listed as 30 and (accurately) born in Oklahoma, while in Arizona he is listed as 26 and born in...Alabama?

Here’s the 1930 census, with Rogan living in Kansas City, Missouri:

On the eve of the first East-West all-star game, Russell J. Cowans wrote in a brief profile of Rogan that he “was born in Oklahoma City, Okla., July 28, 1893” (Pittsburgh Courier, August 26, 1933, p. A5).

But, aside from Phil Dixon’s information about his early life and career, the best indicator that Rogan was probably born later than 1889 is in the 1890 Oklahoma Territorial Census, where we find his father Richard Rogan unmarried, without children, and still living with his widowed father and family, which had only recently moved to Oklahoma City from Sumner County, Tennessee:

UPDATE 12:28 p.m.  I forgot to include Rogan’s grave marker, which gives a birth date of July 28, 1894, presumably from family sources:

“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.)

 

charleston and rogan in the philippines

Uncovering Claudio Manela, the only Filipino player in the Negro Leagues (to my knowledge), got me to thinking about baseball in the Philippines, about which I know very little.  I do know that there was a fairly deep and longstanding connection between the Philippines and the Negro Leagues, starting with military baseball in the 1910s.  Oscar Charleston served in the 24th Infantry in the Philippines, and seems to have made his reputation as a ballplayer there:

(Indianapolis Freeman, January 1, 1916)

James Riley’s Biographical Encyclopedia gives this account of Charleston’s time in the Philippines:

At age fifteen, [Charleston] left home and served a stint in the Army, where he ran track (23 seconds for the 22-yard dash) and played baseball while stationed in the Philippines with the 24th Infantry.  In 1914 he was the only black baseball player in the Manila League.

As it happens, Wilber Rogan was also stationed in the Philippines with the 24th, at about the same time.  I’m not sure of the exact dates Rogan was in the Philippines, but from Phil Dixon’s biography of Rogan, it would seem that he served in the Philippines at least from 1912 until he was discharged from the 24th on October 13, 1914 (after which the 25th Infantry, then stationed in Hawaii, outmaneuvered the 9th Cavalry and claimed Rogan for another five years of Army baseball).  It would be interesting to know whether Rogan and Charleston knew of each other, or played with (or against) each other in the Philippines.

Rogan, by the way, would later revisit the Philippines as a member of the Philadelphia Royal Giants, a touring team put together by West Coast promoter Lonnie Goodwin.

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).