Agate Type

York Colored Monarchs

 

In 1889 the Cuban Giants and the Colored Gorhams, the two most famous professional black baseball teams in the United States, joined the otherwise all-white Middle States League. The Cuban Giants competed for the pennant, which they barely lost to Harrisburg after some very questionable decisions by the league at season’s end. The following year a white promoter named James Monroe Kreiter signed most of the Cuban Giants away for a new team representing York. Kreiter’s club was called the Colored Monarchs, and it played in the Eastern Interstate League, a new circuit that replaced the Middle States League.

The team that had won the Middle States pennant in 1889, the Harrisburg Ponies, signed two of the Cuban Giants for 1890, Frank Grant and Clarence Williams. The Monarchs, however, still had future Hall of Famer Sol White as well as George Williams, Arthur Thomas, and William Selden. Each of these four finished in the top eight in batting average, Williams and Thomas finished 1-2 in slugging percentage, and the team proceeded to run away with the pennant. The Ponies were their only viable challenger. In July, however, Harrisburg jumped the league to join the Atlantic Association. The remainder of the Interstate League, with the York Monarchs way in front, voted to disband—a move, many have suspected, that was intended to prevent a black team from winning the championship.

There is but one well-known image of the York Colored Monarchs (above): drawings of ten players plus Kreiter, which ran in newspapers at the time, and has been reproduced in various places in recent decades.

Well, as it turns out, these drawings were based on a team photograph of the Monarchs. Kevin Pope has sent me images of the photograph, which currently resides in a private collection (not Kevin’s). This is one of the most amazing images I’ve seen in a long time. It may be that it is already known to some of you out there, but when I first saw it I was dumbfounded.

(Kevin photographed the image under less-than-ideal circumstances, resulting in a reflection obscuring the face of William Selden. But he provided another image that shows Selden—see below.)

Standing, L to R: Abe Harrison, William Malone, George Williams, Sol White, Arthur Thomas
Seated, middle: J. Monroe Kreiter
Seated, front row, L to R: William Whyte, Ben Boyd, Jack Frye, William Jackson, William Selden

 

Here are details of the various players, including Selden:

 

 ABE HARRISON

Abe Harrison (1867-1932) played for the Philadelphia Orions and the Argyle Hotel team before joining the Cuban Giants, for whom he played into the late 1890s. A talented infielder and on-field comedian, he was known as the “minstrel man short stop” (Trenton Evening Times, October 13, 1897, p. 8). He batted .255 with 25 stolen bases for York in 1890. I believe this is the first photograph of Harrison I’ve ever seen.

 

WILLIAM MALONE

William H. Malone (1868-1917) first played professionally for the Philadelphia Pythians of the National Colored League in 1887 before joining the Cuban Giants in 1888 and 1889, the York Monarchs in 1890, the Big Gorhams in 1891, and the Page Fence Giants in 1895. For the Monarchs he went 13-5 with a 2.74 ERA.

 

GEORGE WILLIAMS

George L. Williams (1864-1918) played for the Washington Manhattans and Philadelphia Orions before joining the Cuban Giants in 1885. The following year he became their captain. Before the 1887 season he was approached by both the Minneapolis Millers of the Northwestern League and the Oswego Starchboxes of the International League, but turned them down to remain with the Cuban Giants through the 1889 season (“Base Ball Gossip,” Trenton Evening Times, February 1, 1887, 1). Like many of his teammates he moved to the York Monarchs in 1890, where he captained the team, won the batting title with a .386 average, and led the league with a .582 slugging percentage. He spent 1891 with the Big Gorhams, then in 1892 joined the Philadelphia police department. He left briefly in 1905 and 1906 to organize the Wilmington Giants, but quickly returned to the force, becoming its first black detective in 1909. He was “noted for his daring,” and also for his generosity: every Christmas he organized food and gift drives for poor black families. In 1918 he was shot and killed in the line of duty (“Detective Slain Battling Thugs—George L. Williams, Former Cuban Giants Baseball Player, Is Shot,” Philadelphia Inquirer, January 10, 1918, 6).

 

SOL WHITE

Sol White probably needs no introduction to readers of this blog. His career as a professional ballplayer, manager, and coach, in black leagues, white minor leagues, for black independent teams, and in Cuba, has been very well-chronicled. He was the co-founder and manager of two of the most famous teams in black baseball history, the Philadelphia Giants and the New York Lincoln Giants, and wrote the first (and for many years only) book about African American professional baseball. For York in 1890 he hit .350 (third in the league), slugged .457, stole 21 bases, and finished second in the league with 74 runs scored. In 2006 he was very deservedly elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

 

ARTHUR THOMAS

Arthur Thomas (1864-1895) first caught for the Manhattan Base Ball Club of Washington, D. C., at the age of 15 in 1880. He joined the West End club of Long Branch, New Jersey, in 1881 and 1882, and in 1883 rejoined the Manhattans under S. K. Govern before moving with Govern to the Cuban Giants in 1885. He was described as “a good general player, a good batsman, fair base runner, and excellent throw to the bases” (“Good Game Promised,” Trenton Evening Times, May 9, 1886, p. 8). Sol White later said of Thomas:

He was 6 feet 4 inches in height; his arms almost reached his knees; he was sorta [sic] sway-backed and gangled-legged [sic]; he had a moaning voice and actually would cry when his team lost a game. His facial expressions were paradoxical; when he laughed you would have to look twice to see whether he was crying. An extremely hard worker, he ruled the roost including the captain. Thomas was a great receiver behind the bat. With his long arms he would reach out and grab wild pitches and when the ball left his hand for second base it looked like a long snake. (“Sol White Recalls,” New York Age, December 27, 1930, 6)

With the York Monarchs in 1890, Thomas hit .333 and led the league with 26 doubles and 11 triples, and finished second to his teammate George Williams in slugging percentage with .567. After leaving big-time baseball Thomas settled in Trenton, New Jersey, where he caught for and captained both black and white semipro teams. He died in Trenton of consumption (tuberculosis) at the age of 30 on August 8, 1895 (“Died,” Trenton Evening Times, August 11, 1895, 5; “Observations from the Grandstand,” Trenton Evening Times, August 9, 1896, 3).

 

J. MONROE KREITER

A member of a prominent Harrisburg family, James Monroe Kreiter, Jr. (1856-1911) was a ballplayer in his youth. He later managed Harrisburg’s Eastern League entry before founding the York Monarchs in 1890. His real job was as a printer for the Harrisburg Patriot newspaper, and he became active in the typographical union as well as local politics. He eventually secured a position as the U.S. government’s chief printer in Panama.

 

WILLIAM WHYTE

William T. Whyte (1860-1936) served as pitcher and outfielder for the St. Louis Black Stockings and Boston Resolutes before joining the Cuban Giants in 1885. He stayed with them through 1893, except for his year with the York Monarchs, where he went 11-5 with a 3.02 ERA, batted .302, and slugged .453. He retired to Trenton, New Jersey.

 

BEN BOYD

Benjamin F. Boyd (1858-?) was a veteran of the original Cuban Giants. He was born in Maryland in 1858, and started his baseball career in Washington, D. C., in 1874. “A good general player” and versatile infielder, he joined S. K. Govern’s Manhattan Base Ball Club in 1883, and played for the Cuban Giants (1885-1889), the York Monarchs (1890), and Big Gorhams (1891). He batted just .267 for the Monarchs, with a lone double as his only extra base hit.

 

JACK FRYE

John H. Frye (1864-1904) was the fifth known African American to play in organized baseball in the United States, appearing briefly for the Reading Actives of the Interstate Association late in the 1883 season. He came to the Actives from the Renovo, Pennsylvania, club, where he had caught for Patrick Friel, the team’s star pitcher. Friel moved to the Reading club, and a few weeks later Frye was brought in to catch for him (“McCafferty Struck,” Reading Eagle, September 15, 1883, 1). Of the 20 other players on the Reading roster that year, 17 would eventually play in the major leagues, including Friel, who would make it as a veteran outfielder in 1890 and 1891. Frye also played for another white team, Lewiston of the 1886 Pennsylvania State Association, before joining the Cuban Giants, where he would spend most of his career. With York in 1890 he batted .303 with a .438 slugging percentage. He retired from baseball after the 1896 season and moved to Culpeper County, Virginia, where he died on June 10, 1904 (“Bits for the Fans,” Harrisburg Telegraph, June 11, 1904, 8).

 

WILL JACKSON

A left-handed catcher, Will Jackson was in his first season as a professional. In 46 games he batted .251 and stole 18 bases. In 1894, Jackson and George Stovey formed a “left-handed battery” for the Cuban Giants. By the late 1890s, when Jackson had graduated to captaining the Giants, he was more of an outfielder. So far, given the commonness of his name, I haven’t been able to track down any specific information about him.
.

WILLIAM SELDEN

Pitching for the Boston Resolutes of the National Colored League in 1887, William H. “Billy” Selden (1866-1926) won their only league game in Louisville, whereupon the team immediately went broke. Stranded, the players had to make their own way back to Boston. Selden, however, was signed by the Cuban Giants, and went on to a long career as a pitcher for black professional teams, including the Cuban Giants, Gorhams, and Cuban X-Giants. By the late 1890s he was spending the offseasons as a vaudeville performer. For York in 1890 he went 15-6, 2.63, with a league-second 100 strikeouts, and batted .330 with a .429 slugging percentage and 19 steals. Box score research shows him (so far) undefeated (11-0) against black professional teams in the 19th century. This is the first photograph I’ve seen of Selden.

 

 

 

Cuban Giants, 1910

A few weeks ago James Tate alerted me to this stunning postcard of a Cuban Giants team, with the players identified on the reverse, for sale on eBay:

And here is the reverse side, which identifies the players:

Standing, L to R: Clarence Williams, Judy Gans, Brown (see below), Harry Leavell, John Emory, Al Robinson (captain), Bill Land; seated, middle row: Jesse Bragg, John Bright (owner/business manager), Wallace Gordon, Dawson (no first name); seated, front row: mascot, Alfred “Toad” Satterfield, Benjamin Reese.

The seller dated it “ca. 1908,” but it’s actually pretty easy to establish more precisely that the photograph shows the 1910 Cuban Giants. The key is the presence of captain Al Robinson, who played for the Cuban Giants only in 1910.

This postcard is quite significant, as it provides us with the first confirmed images (that I know of, anyway) of Bill Land, Al Robinson, Benjamin Reese, and Dawson (who still lacks a first name), and the first really clear photo of Jesse Bragg I’ve seen. It’s also perhaps the only glimpse we have of the 1910 Cuban Giants uniforms.

In addition to all that, it gives us more insight into other photos and teams, most notably this picture of the 1906 Brooklyn Royal Giants, discussed by Albert Flannery here.



The 1910 Cuban Giants postcard, I believe, confirms Albert’s ID of Al Robinson as the player standing in back, third from right, in the Royal Giants photo.

But look at the player identified as “Brown” with the Cuban Giants. He is quite obviously the same person as the guy standing in the middle of the back row (fourth from right, fourth from left) in the Royal Giants picture.

Albert had identified this player as the pitcher Peter “Pop” Andrews, though admittedly this was more speculative. I think the 1910 Cuban Giants postcard makes it quite clear that this is in fact Harry Brown.

Or is it? I have always thought the Brown who played for the Royal Giants from 1905 through 1909 was Harry Brown, but check out this article from early 1910, which identifies the Cuban Giants player as Mike Brown:

(Baltimore Afro-American, April 23, 1910, p. 6)

Given that Brown of the 1910 Cuban Giants also definitely played for the 1906 Royal Giants, this would seem to indicate that the Royal Giants player was Mike Brown. See also this note listing guests at the Colonial Hotel in Pittsburgh in early 1906, which included members of the “Royal Giants baseball club, of Brooklyn, N. Y.,” one of them named “M. Brown”:

 

(“Notes for the Afro-Americans,” Pittsburgh Press, April 29, 1906, p. 40)

(By the way, “R. Foster” is not Rube Foster, but rather the catcher Robert Footes.)

For the heck of it, here’s Mike Brown and a couple of his 1910 Cuban Giants teammates on the 1913 Schenectady Mohawk Giants:

(Schenectady Gazette, May 2, 1913, p. 15)

L to R: William Wernecke (owner), Jesse Bragg, Grant Johnson, Mike Brown, Big Bill Smith, Cyclone Joe Williams, Leroy Grant, Judy Gans, Phil Bradley, Johnny Pugh.

UPDATE 3:11 pm: Added the reverse side of the postcard and identified all the players, which I had completely forgotten to do.

UPDATE 4:48 pm: Added a link to Albert's discussion of the Royal Giants photos.

lum croxton of the cuban giants

A huge amount of information has been dug up in recent years about previously very obscure players, but much of it has generally gone unnoticed or unreported except in emails between researchers. I’m going to try to bring a lot of this research out into the light of day. Let’s start with Columbus “Lum” Croxton, a pitcher for the New York Cuban Giants in 1908 and 1909. He appears in the roster at the end of Robert W. Peterson’s Only the Ball Was White and in Riley’s Biographical Encyclopedia merely as “Croxton,” with no other information about him. We can now fill in quite a bit about his life and career, even if we don’t know everything.

He first appears in the 1900 census in Hill Township, Little Rock, Arkansas, a district that would later become part of the town of Argenta (now North Little Rock). According to this entry, he was born in February of 1885 in Mississippi, and by the age of 15 was already working as a day laborer while still living with his parents.

It’s not known when Columbus Croxton started to play ball. We next find him already in the big time (relatively speaking), as a pitcher for the Cuban Giants of the 1908 National Association of Colored Baseball Clubs. As far as games against top black professionals went, he was as close to an ace as the team got, going 2-5 with a 2.64 ERA, leading the team in games and innings pitched.  The highlight of his National Association season was perhaps a 2 to 1 win over the Philadelphia Giants in Atlantic City, with Croxton holding John Henry Lloyd and company to seven scattered hits.

(Philadelphia Inquirer, September 16, 1908, p. 11)

Croxton was still with the Cubans in 1909 when they were beginning to be marginalized by Nat Strong; but they were kicked out of the league entirely in 1910, and Croxton went home to Argenta. While there he had to deal with something most big leaguers don’t have to worry about now during the off season:

(Indianapolis Freeman, February 26, 1910, p. 7)

 Croxton recovered, and in the spring joined several of his Cuban Giants teammates on the Bluff City Tigers of Memphis, Tennessee. In this article his name was garbled in a pretty unfortunate way:

(Indianapolis Freeman, March 5, 1910, p. 7)

 

(Indianapolis Freeman, May 14, 1910, p. 7)

 That spring Croxton appears in the 1910 U.S. census living in Argenta at the same address as in 1900 (208 South Cypress Street), with his now-widowed mother (whose name is given here as Mary Croxton instead of Francis). His occupation is listed as “Ball Player.” His age here is given as 20, making born five years later than the 1900 census entry.

After a year with the Memphis Tigers, he moved back home to captain a “howling aggregation” known as the Argenta Grays. Another player on the Grays was Wabishaw “Bill” Wiley, a student at Arkansas Baptist College and future dentist and New York Lincoln Giants star.

(Indianapolis Freeman, April 15, 1911, p. 7)

 The following season Croxton would have “a first-class club of his own,” staffed by  “a bunch of stars of the South.”

 

(Indianapolis Freeman, December 16, 1911, p. 7)

 

(Indianapolis Freeman, April 13, 1912, p. 6)

 The name of Croxton’s 1912 club remains unknown for now, but it might have been the Little Rock Quapaws, the team he led in 1913. (John “Pop” Ransom was manager of Croxton’s old team, the Memphis Tigers.)

 

(Indianapolis Freeman, April 12, 1913, p. 7)

 It’s not clear when (indeed, if) he quit baseball. In 1915 he was still living with his mother in the same house, but by 1916 he had established himself as the proprietor of a pool hall, a fairly common line of work for current and former ball players. (He was still living with his mother.)

(Little Rock City Directory, 1916)

 He grew “prosperous” in his new business, although like many other operators of such establishments, he walked a fine line with respect to the law. In early 1916 Croxton was arrested and charged for bootlegging.

But he never had a chance to answer these charges. Shortly before 8 o’clock in the evening on April 22, 1916, Croxton left a friend’s house on Arkansas Avenue to walk home. Ten minutes later another friend, leaving the same house, happened upon Croxton sitting under a bridge, in some distress. She left for help, but when she returned he was dead.  Here let the Arkansas Gazette tell a more detailed version of the story:

(Arkansas Gazette, April 23, 1916)

(Arkansas Gazette, April 24, 1916)

The coroner’s jury would eventually give the definitive word on Croxton’s death:

(Arkansas Gazette, April 25, 1916)

The Arkansas Gazette pieces were dug up by Caleb Hardwick, who does amazing work at the Arkansas Baseball Encyclopedia (especially check out his Negro league pages).

Anyway—the point I have about Lum Croxton, if I need to have one, is not that his was an exceptional or especially dramatic life, apart from the circumstances surrounding his death (if not his death itself). It’s that even a relatively obscure, poorly documented member of a second-tier team in the early twentieth century, somebody who existed for decades as just a last name in most lists of Negro league players, can eventually have his story hold. Hundreds of others like him are only know emerging into the light from many years of neglect.

harry northup, cuban giants

The Steve McQueen-directed movie 12 Years A Slave stars Chiwetel Ejiofor as Solomon Northup, a free black man in Saratoga Springs, New York, who was kidnaped and sold into slavery into 1841.   It’s based on Northup’s own book about what happened, a best-seller in 1853.  Thanks to the indefatigable Bill Mullins I have learned a little-known fact about Northup: one of his grandsons was a professional ballplayer for the Cuban Giants. 

During the Civil War Solomon’s son Alonzo enlisted in the 26th New York Colored Regiment and fought in the Battle of Bloody Bridge at Johns Island, South Carolina, in 1864.  After the war he married and had a number of children, including John Henry “Harry” Northup (also spelled Northrup or Northrop), born in 1882.  Right around his 20th birthday, in late July 1902, Harry Northup joined John Bright’s Genuine Cuban Giants.

(Syracuse Journal, July 30, 1902, p. 3)

He pitched and played outfield for the rest of the 1902 season.  His 1903 whereabouts are unknown (so far I haven’t found his name in any Cuban Giants box scores for that year), but late in 1904 he rejoined the team.  He seems to have been with them when John García dropped dead from heart failure on the field on October 1, 1904, though I don’t know if Northup was in that game. 

Here’s one of many box scores showing Northup playing for the Cuban Giants against the Carbondale, Pennsylvania, team:

(Scranton Republican, August 29, 1904, p. 8)

Unfortunately Northup hasn’t been found in any box scores for games between the Cuban Giants and other top black teams, which explains his absence from the Seamheads Negro Leagues DB.  He also doesn’t appear in either of the Cuban Giants team photos I’ve seen from this period (1902 and 1903).

E. G. Treat, a former New York state assemblyman who had known Harry Northup as a child and had given his first baseball job (as a team mascot), wrote a long tribute to him that was printed in the Cayuga Chief (and reprinted in the Auburn Citizen-Advertiser) upon Northup’s death in 1944. 

As a ballplayer, Treat wrote, Northup (frequently known as “Zip”) “just naturally had everything—speed, a true eye, baseball spirit, an indomitable will to win, and a fine arm.  He developed into a pitcher of unusual ability…His reputation constantly mounted and the Cuban Giants, the finest colored baseball team of all time, engaged him as a pitcher.  In that capacity he starred throughout the entire country and almost every baseball enthusiast knew of him and admired his work.  In after years he continued for some time with the [Weedsport, New York] Watsons.  His enthusiasm and his baseball experience were great assets to the team.  He and Barney McManus [another local player] were the best coaches I have ever seen anywhere and I have through the years seen nearly all the great teams and the great players.”

Treat also penned a poetic tribute to Northup, which went, in part:

If on the green
We could place a team
Of eight players more
Like Zip Northrup,
What a score
We’d roll up.

With bat and run
He was never done
‘Till the game was won.
O’er flowing with fun
Always a gentleman!
Hip—hurrah-hip—
Rah, rah, rah for Zip!

Harry Northup’s tenure with the Cuban Giants was the hight point of his baseball career.  By 1910 he was married with two kids, and was living in Cayuga County, New York, where he would spend the rest of his life.  He continued to play ball for semipro teams into the late 1910s.  In 1916 he played for the Dunn & McCarthy team, which won the local Industrial League pennant.  The following year he went to work for International Harvester, switched to their team, and again won the championship, becoming the first player to serve on two pennant-winning teams in that league.  (It’s possible he was the only African American in the league as well, though I can’t say that for sure.)

Here’s an unfortunately poor-quality image of the 1917 International Harvester team (courtesy of Bill Mullins), with Harry Northup standing third from left (not that you can see his face at all).

(Auburn Citizen, October 11, 1917, p. 2)

Harry Northup continued to work for International Harvester for many years, and was still coaching baseball as late as 1929.  Unlike his grandfather Solomon, who disappeared from the historical record in the late 1850s and whose ultimate fate is a matter of some controversy, we know that Harry Northup passed away in Cayuga County in 1944 and was buried there.

Thanks (again) to Bill Mullins for telling me about Northup and providing much of the information above.

 

cuban giants, 1903

As a follow-up to John Thorn’s essay about the small Catskills resort community of Fleischmanns, New York, and its turn-of-the-century semipro team, the Mountain Athletic Club, John also sent this amazing photograph of the 1903 Cuban Giants (who played the Mountain Tourists on August 10 of that year). 

Based on other photos (including this one, of the 1902 Cuban Giants), we can identify most of the players, as follows:

Standing L to R: Eddie Day, John M. Bright, Bill Galloway.

Seated, middle row: Lem Williams, unknown, John “Pop” Watkins, Wallace Gordon, William Kelley.

Seated, front row: “Toad” Satterfield, John García, Nate Harris, Clarence “Clem” Sampson.

The player I have identified as Galloway here also looks a little bit like the pitcher Abbott (no first name yet known), shown here in another Cuban Giants team photo:

Whereas here are a couple of photos of Galloway:

 

And here is a closeup of the guy in the 1903 Cuban Giants photo above:

Abbott seems to have joined the Cubans late in 1903, whereas Galloway was a regular all year long, so he would seem the likelier candidate.

Aside from that, the only unidentified player left is the guy sitting in the middle row between Williams and Watkins holding the ball, which was a common pose for pitchers in team photos at the time.  In the box scores you can find, in addition to the players already identified, pitchers named Jones and Brown, so they would be the top candidates for now.

Lemuel Russell Williams, by the way, first joined the Cuban Giants that year (1903), probably at the behest of fellow Geneva, Ohio, resident Wallace Gordon.  After his baseball career he returned to Ohio and in the 1920s played an important role helping to organize the Tate Stars and other Cleveland Negro league clubs.  (His biographical information at the Seamheads DB hasn’t been updated yet, but will be soon.)

mangled forms

 

Griffin Corners / Fleischmanns, New York, ca. 1904-1907.

 

Today I’m proud to post one of my favorite essays by John Thorn (originally published in The Woodstock Times in 2004). I’ll post my own notes and comments later this weekend.

Mangled Forms

By John Thorn

Stephen Hawking, the Cambridge University mathematician, is famous in this country for his best-selling if little-read Brief History of Time and for his role in an episode of The Simpsons. On July 21, 2004, in a paper to the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation in Dublin, he recanted his long-held theory that black holes destroy all the “information” they consume, reporting instead that these collapsed stars spit out matter and energy “in a mangled form.” With this tilt back to the mainstream of quantum physics he also settled a bet he had made in 1997 with Caltech astrophysicist John Preskill, who had insisted that matter consumed by black holes could not be destroyed. The loser was to provide the winner with the encyclopedia of the winner’s choice, a repository of either indestructible or migratory information.

At the conference Dr. Hawking presented Professor Preskill with the  reference work he requested—Total Baseball, which I have edited through eight editions since 1989—after having it expressed to the Dublin conference from the U.S. “I had great difficulty in finding one over here,” Hawking told reporters, “so I offered him an encyclopedia of cricket as an alternative but John wouldn't be persuaded of the superiority of cricket.”

A few days before the conference, appearing on the British Broadcasting Corp.’s Newsnight program, Hawking tiptoed around the major announcement he planned for Dublin. “A black hole only appears to form but later opens up and releases information about what fell inside,” he indicated. “So we can be sure of the past and predict the future.” This remark has set me to thinking.

Fleischmanns, New York, is an appealingly forlorn spot 30 minutes from Woodstock and 50 if not 100 years from the rest of America. Its old-fashioned Catskills summers—fresh air, cool mountain nights, porch sitting, ball playing, swimming, and dozing off in lawn chairs—have been swallowed up in this country’s black hole of visceral diversion, cheap transport, and festive biodomes in steamy locales uninhabitable before the advent of contrived cold air. In Fleischmanns the mangled evidence of its former glories has not yet become unrecognizable; on the contrary, the eerie remains of grand hotels and the burnt offerings of desperate arsons form the spur to memory. In this somewhat remote place, determined individuals and families who love the old ways are working to be sure of the past; the extent of their success will indeed predict the future of Fleischmanns and so many other communities whose histories, if properly understood and conveyed, are their principal assets.

John Duda is one such person. As a trustee of the Skene Memorial Library (a handsome 1902 building on Main Street) and the Greater Fleischmanns Museum of Memories, a granny’s-attic barn alongside the library, he proudly rummaged through some of the museum’s treasures. Billheads, photographs, postcards, scorecards, tools, menus—all attested to a vibrant Fleischmanns whose permanent population ca. 1940 reached 500 (today it is 351); but by the Fourth of July back then, it was said there would be 10,000 folks in town. While recent summers have brought no trainloads of tourists, Mr. Duda loves the Fleischmanns that was and, while he works toward the community that might be, it was plain that he loved the Fleischmanns that is.

And so do I. I loved it when I was 5, vacationing at a local bungalow colony with my extended family, and I loved it two decades later, when it was time for me to leave New York City with my wife and four-month-old son and look for a new home in the old Catskills. The swarms of tourists were gone, but I figured the mountains were still there, so was the air, and one could make out pretty well on a small purse. While I live there no longer, the place still tugs at me whenever I visit. For years the onset of spring—which in our household meant the chance to play, watch, and chatter about baseball—was not assured until my sons and I drove up to Fleischmanns—gloves, bat and ball in the trunk—to cavort on the field along Wagner Avenue where we knew Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb and other major leaguers had once played (either as autumn hunting guests of the Fleischmann brothers or as ringers brought in for the semi-pro team they sponsored). Local legend had it that the elders of Fleischmanns named the Avenue for Honus Wagner, but that has since proven to be apocryphal.

The Ulster & Delaware railroad station, Griffin Corners, ca. 1902.  From Train and Trolley Stations (Photos from the Joseph A. Smith Collection).

Julius and Max Fleischmann came to this community to escape the heat of Cincinnati summers around 1883, when it was called Griffin Corners. (The newly incorporated village was renamed “Fleischmanns” in 1913, after the family’s donation of the ballfield.) Their father, Charles, who had founded the Fleischmanns distilling and yeast companies, had just bought land west of the village near the Ulster & Delaware railroad station. The Fleischmanns and their friends soon built summer homes that were the stuff of fantasy, with porches, turrets, and terraces and costly interior trappings; the Fleischmanns’ grounds included a deer park, a riding stable, a heated pool filled with spring water, and a trout pond. Jewish families—not welcome in many respectable hotels of the region, despite their wealth and stature in New York City—flocked to the new hotels that also sprang up in the region. Entertainment was provided by Broadway and operatic stars of the first rank, furloughed for part of the summer because of the city’s heat. Some, like Julia Marlowe and Amelita Galli Curci, built fine summer homes in the hills.

Julius joined his father’s firm out of prep school and by age 28 he was elected mayor of Cincinnati in 1900; his popularity won him a second term as well. He and older brother Max became principal owners of the Cincinnati Reds in 1902, and they even had, secretly, a piece of the Philadelphia Phillies, too, a breach of baseball law even in those lawless days. But the Fleischmann brothers, for all their success back in Cincinnati, were active sportsmen first and foremost—polo players, yachtsmen, hunters, and would-be baseball players. In the summer, away from their home town, they had no way to see or play their beloved game. So, anticipating the movie Field of Dreams, they built a fine ballgrounds (by 1903 it could accommodate 5,000 spectators) and started up a team; as if it were just another trout pond, they stocked the Mountain Athletic Club—also known as the Mountain Tourists—with the best players they could buy, generally professionals or high-caliber collegians willing to play under pseudonyms that would safeguard their amateur eligibility. Honus Wagner may not have given his name to the avenue beside the playing field, but he did play with the Fleischmanns club in 1895 along with Max Fleischmann, who did the best he could in the outfield. (Manager of that team was Harry M. Stevens of Niles, Ohio, who five years later would wrap a frankfurter in a bun and, after seeing cartoonist Tad Dorgan’s characterization of the wiener as a dachshund, call it a hot dog.) In the first years of the new century, the Fleischmanns club featured such future major leaguers as Miller Huggins (playing as “Proctor,”) Red Dooin, Doc White, Jiggs Donahue, Barney McFadden, George Rohe, and Kingston-born Pete Cregan.

Scorecard for Cuban Giants vs. Mountain Athletic Club, August 10, 1903.  Image courtesy of John Thorn.

The New York Sun of July 12, 1900, observed that the Mountain Athletic Club “diamond is at the base of the mountains and the field has been laid out with no sparing of expense. The grounds are inclosed [sic] with a wire-netting fence and there is a small grand stand, which is always devoted to the Messrs. Fleischmanns’ guests. Guarantees, as much as $150 a game, are paid to the clubs to play there, irrespective of the small gate receipts. The players are quartered at a first-class hotel, and are serenaded by a band once a week.”

On August 10, 1903, the Mountain A.C. played at home against the famous Cuban Giants, who featured Bill Galloway at 2B. He was the last African-American to play in an integrated professional league (for Woodstock of the Canadian League in 1899) until Jackie Robinson. The “Cubans” were held to one run by the Fleischmanns’ pitcher, “Goldburg.” Jews summered in Fleischmanns because they were excluded from other, tonier resorts; blacks had to play on teams of their own because they were excluded from both the major and minor leagues. This was an oddly emblematic contest.

Although the Catskills region may have exhibited more tolerance than other locales, its appetite for diversity was no greater. There were the Jewish Catskills (and among these, pockets devoted to specific national clientele: Rumanian, Hungarian, Austrian, German, etc.). There were Irish Catskills. There were Italian Catskills. Oh, there still are such designated areas, but the national pursuit of homogenization and standardization has robbed them of authentic flavor.

 

A rare shot of an early African-American baseball team in action: Cuban Giants at Mountain Athletic Club, Griffin Corners, New York, August 10, 1903.  Photo courtesy of John Thorn.

In any event, the era of the grand hotel—atop Highmount or tucked in the hills along the Delaware River—is forever gone at Fleischmanns, and hurtling along toward its exit in Sullivan County. An arson epidemic, not all of it inspired by insurance fraud, robbed the region of many fine buildings (remember the Catskill Mountain House?) that might have been reclaimed by later generations, more attuned to the economic and psychic value of preservation. The question must be asked: In the absence of tangible ruin, how can we “be sure of the past and predict the future,” in Stephen Hawking’s words?

A pilgrimage to the site of the Takanassee Hotel in Fleischmanns, scorched or torched in 1971, reveals a fantastic remnant. Two massive stone pillars along the roadside invite the pilgrim to a broad vista of parched earth, bulldozed up the hill to where the hotel once stood. Where the clearing efforts appear to have ceased, nature has begun to reclaim her ancient right of way. Walk a little into the overgrowth, past the incongruous concrete slab and there!—in the sacred wood—a vast reservoir, filled to the rim, with fat fish swimming lazily amid the wrecked lumber tossed in long ago. This was the hallmark of the Takanassee—the famously huge swimming pool, 275 feet long, nearly a football field, and 145 feet wide. Information mangled beyond recognition, yet with the aid of memory, revivified.

The Takanassee Hotel in its heyday.

player of the week: john garcía

In Sol White’s History of Colored Base Ball (1907) there appears the photo to the left below, of “A. Garcia (deceased), Genuine Cuban Giants.”  In Jerry Malloy’s edition, García appears in the index as “Antonio García,” and a few other sources seem to suggest that this García is Antonio María García, the greatest Cuban player of the nineteenth century.  However, A. M. García, who was nicknamed “El Inglés” for his tall stature and pale complexion, is pictured in the photo on the right (from Jorge Figueredo’s Who’s Who in Cuban Baseball):



They are, I think, clearly different people.  This photo, showing the slender García on the cover of El Score, makes the difference more obvious.  A. M. García did travel to the United States with Abel Linares’s All-Cubans in 1903, 1904, and 1905, but to my knowledge neither he nor any other Cuban player ever appeared with the Cuban Giants, which was a thoroughly African-American team.  Moreover, El Inglés passed away in Cuba on July 24, 1923. 

The García pictured in Sol White’s book appears in team photos of the Cuban Giants from 1902 (courtesy of Brian Campf) and 1903 (courtesy of John Thorn):



So who was he?  The Elmira, N.Y., Daily Gazette and Free Press (October 15, 1904) gives us an idea:

“In the last two or three years that the Cuban Giants have played baseball in this city,the position of catcher has been filled by a little, round chap who did not look much like a baseball crack.  He resembled more an apple dumpling than anything else, but when play commenced it was soon seen that he filled the bill.  He was agile as a cat and gathered in wild pitches and foul flies with a regularity and deftness that won the admiration of even those whom he put out.  He was John Garcia and had many friends here.”

The Daily Gazette was speaking in the past tense for a reason.  For the full story let’s turn to this front page article in the New York Times of October 2, 1904:



I was able to obtain John García’s death certificate, which confirms the details here, and adds a little more.  He was a “Base ball player” by trade who died on October 1, 1904, at King’s Park, Jamaica, from causes that aren’t completely legible in the (awful) copy I was given, but include an “aortic aneurysm and haemorrhage.”  Moreover, while the Times was skeptical about his national identity, the death certificate asserts that he was born in Cuba, giving him the singular honor of being the only genuine Cuban on the “Genuine Cuban Giants.”




News of his death spread quickly through upstate New York, where the Cuban Giants had barnstormed and where Garcia had gained “many friends,” in Elmira and elsewhere.  It soon emerged that he had taken his gregariousness further than anyone had imagined.  The dumpling-shaped but dextrous catcher, it turned out, had two wives.

One was black and one was white, and both tried to claim his body. The dispute caused “considerable excitement” at Everitt’s, the black undertaking establishment where García had been taken.  Evidently García had constructed two separate worlds and, possibly, two separate racial identities for himself.  The newspapers didn’t name either woman, but the black Mrs. García was known to his teammates and to the black undertaker.  Her address (874 Atlantic Ave.) was entered on his death certificate, which also classified García as “black.” 

The other Mrs. García was a “buxom white woman,” according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle (October 7, 1904), who lived at 149 Underhill Avenue in Brooklyn and maintained that García’s father had been an “Indian” (apparently in order to establish that he was not black.)  In the words of the Daily Eagle, “she admitted that García occasionally stayed at 874 Atlantic avenue,” but produced a marriage certificate “dated last April in Brooklyn.”  The response of the black Mrs. García, if any, was not recorded in the press. 

Ultimately the white Mrs. García carried the day, securing her husband’s removal to the Underhill address under the care of a different undertaker, and arranging for his burial in Evergreen Cemetery.  Presumably the “little round chap” who gave his life for the Genuine Cuban Giants still resides there today.

This piece was originally published in the Outsider Baseball Bulletin (Vol. I, Issue 16; September 29, 2010).

1902 cuban giants

Courtesy of Brian Campf, here is a photograph of the 1902 Cuban Giants, from the pages of a 1903 issue of Tip Top Weekly, a publication aimed at kids and primarily known as the original vehicle for the Frank Merriwell serials. 

Brian wondered what (if anything) I knew about these players.  Here goes:

1) Green is probably not Pete Green, a Brooklyn high school graduate whom I’ve got born in 1891.  However, there is some reason to think that Pete Green might have been several years older than that, in fact just old enough to be playing professionally in 1903, so stay tuned.

2) William “Hippo” Galloway, who as a third baseman for the Woodstock club of the Canadian League in 1899 was the last (known) black player in organized baseball until Jackie Robinson (give or take Charlie Grant in 1901, Jimmy Claxton in 1916, and any number of Cubans).  It would probably be most accurate to say that Galloway was the last openly black player in organized baseball.

3) I don’t know anything about Day yet, but I have seen his name in plenty of box scores.

4) Sampson was evidently nicknamed “Clam Hand,” but other than that I’ve got nothing.

5) The outfielder “King” Kelly was supposed to be a “funny coacher,” but I don’t have his first name yet.

6) John García was a Cuban-born catcher who grew up in the United States.  He would die from a heart attack suffered during a game in 1904.  I wrote an article about him in the Outsider Baseball Bulletin in 2010.

7) John “Pop” Watkins was, of course, a very well-known coach who organized a number of second-tier teams up and down the east coast, most notably the Havana Red Sox.  He discovered and developed a number of future stars, such as Phil Cockrell, Toussaint Allen, Dennis Graham, and George Dixon.  I wrote a series of posts on him a few years ago.

8) I know nothing about the shortstop Bolan other than his name.

9) Wallace Clifford Gordon was an infielder from Painesville, Ohio.  His career has been attributed to the catcher/first baseman Sam Gordon, who was from West Virginia.  Wallace Gordon played for the Cuban Giants for many years.  He was standing next to William Bedford when Bedford was killed by lightning at Inlet Park in Atlantic City in 1909.  (That makes two Cuban Giants players who died in on-field incidents in the 1900s.)  At the end of his career he played for the Indianapolis ABCs in 1914 and 1915, and published poetry in the Indianapolis Ledger.