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.

walter johnson, negro leaguer?

A few weeks ago Bill Staples flagged a fascinating passage from Edwin B. Henderson’s classic, The Negro in Sport (1939), about Walter Johnson and black baseball.  It was actually quoted from a Shirley Povich column in the Washington Post, originally published on April 7, 1939, in which Povich talked to Walter Johnson about the Negro Leagues.  The column contains Johnson’s oft-quoted endorsement of Josh Gibson, saying that “any big league club would like to buy” Gibson for $200,000.  “He can do everything.  He hits that ball a mile. And he catches so easy he might just as well be in a rocking chair.  Throws like a rifle.  Bill Dickey isn’t as good a catcher.  Too bad this Gibson is a colored fellow.”

But the column goes on to tell this somewhat less well-known story:

(Washington Post, April 7, 1939, p. 7)

The idea of Walter Johnson being hired to pitch for a “colored team” (which, by the way, he doesn’t name) is fascinating.  I can’t say I’ve ever heard of a similar situation—a famous white major league pitcher being picked up for a game by an otherwise all-black team, and to pitch against another black team. I really can’t think of one.  This would amount to Walter Johnson (and his catcher, Gabby Street) “playing colored baseball,” as he put it to Povich. 

Of course, this would have been a pretty big deal, especially as Johnson said the game occurred in Harlem. The story can’t be exactly correct in all particulars, as the Lincoln Giants were not founded until 1911—Johnson couldn’t have pitched against them in 1909. 

I have also run across occasional claims of games that sound similar to what Johnson told Povich in 1939, although none of these accounts have Johnson pitching for a black team. 

In 1935 Dave Driscoll, a Brooklyn Dodgers executive who had been a semipro player in the 1900s and 1910s, talked to a Brooklyn Eagle columnist about black baseball.  He garbles a lot of names and details, so it’s not an especially reliable source, but he does say this:

(Brooklyn Daily Eagle, January 13, 1935, p. D2)

Unfortunately, a typesetting error deprives us of the number of Lincoln Giants Johnson supposedly struck out.  Anyway, this has Johnson and Street as the battery for a “white semi-pro team” playing against, and beating, the Lincoln Giants in Harlem, although in 1914 and not 1909.  And it’s worth noting that Grant “Home Run” Johnson did play for the Lincoln Giants in 1914, although in Driscoll’s account there couldn’t have been a home run by one of the black players.

In 1926 Jim Keenan, the Lincoln Giants’ owner, remembered another faceoff between Walter Johnson and Joe Williams, although he said it was “about ten years ago” in the Bronx, and that Williams Johnson won, 1 to 0:

(Pittsburgh Courier, May 8, 1926, p. 14)

John Holway recounts a similar-sounding game in The Complete Book of Baseball’s Negro Leagues (p. 122), also a this time a 1 to 0 victory for Williams over Johnson, while adding a crucial detail:

“Ted Williams heard the story from an old man in Connecticut.  As Ted re-told it, Johnson struck out one black hitter three times.  In the ninth the batter said, ‘Mr. Johnson, you done struck me out three times, but I’m gonna hit the next one out of here.’  And he did.

“Ted asked Johnson if the story was true.  ‘He just nodded his head,’ Ted said, ‘he just nodded his head’.”

Here we have Johnson pitching against (presumably) the Lincoln Giants and giving up a home run to an unnamed black hitter, although unlike the game in the account Johnson gave to Povich in 1939, the Lincolns won, and again Johnson was presumably not playing for a black team.

So, are there any contemporary accounts of actual games that give some substance to these stories?

I couldn’t find a game pitched by Walter Johnson against (or for) a black team on the east coast in 1909.  But I did find two games he pitched against (but not for) black teams in Harlem within a few years of 1909.

First, in 1914, the year Dave Driscoll claimed Johnson had shut out the Lincoln Giants with Gabby Street as his catcher, Walter Johnson ventured into Lenox Oval, Harlem, to lead the New York City Fire Department team, nicknamed the “Smoke Eaters,”  against the Lincoln Stars (not the Giants).  Both teams were founded by the McMahons, so we’re not too far off.  Gabby Street was not to be found, however, and Johnson lost to Gunboat Thompson and the Stars 2 to 0.  At the same time Joe Williams and the Lincoln Giants were a few blocks away beating the Philadelphia Phillies:

(New York Press, October 12, 1914, p. 9)

But the game that most resembles what Walter Johnson told Shirley Povich in 1939 took place in 1911.  On October 15 of that year Johnson and a team of “All Leaguers,” with Gabby Street catching, defeated the Lincoln Giants at Olympic Field, 5 to 3.  Johnson fanned 14.

(New York Age, October 19, 1911, p. 6)

There were no home runs hit off the Big Train that day, and no Home Run Johnson, either (he wouldn’t join the Lincoln Giants until 1913).   I haven’t been able to figure out exactly who the other All Leaguers were.  None of the names matches any black professional players of the time, as far as I can tell. There was a white semipro team called Joe Wall’s All Leaguers that played in New York City that summer, but they seem to have been a different team (none of the names are the same).  Johnson, with Street as his catcher, pitched two exhibition games for a team of American League All Stars (including Ty Cobb and Smokey Joe Wood), in Washington on October 10 (losing) and in Baltimore on October 13 (winning).  Aside from Johnson and Street, none of the All Stars showed up on the All Leaguers.  (John Holway has said that the Wagner at shortstop was Honus Wagner, but this seems rather unlikely.)

Anyway, Johnson wasn’t playing for a “colored team,” but this is the closest match I can find.  If anybody can come up with a better candidate, let me know.

UPDATE 12/7/2012, 9:14 a.m. I forgot to mention another famous occasion on which Walter Johnson faced a black team - his 1-0 loss to Frank Wickware and the Mohawk Giants in 1913.

UPDATE 12/7/2012, 9:30 a.m. I mistakenly said that Keenan had Joe Williams beating Johnson 1 to 0, but he actually said Johnson won (now corrected above).

UPDATE 12/7/2012, 2:14 p.m.  See new post on the context for the October 15, 1911, game between the Lincoln Giants and All-Leaguers.

méndez vs. williams, havana, 1912

José Méndez (1920), Cyclone Joe Williams (1912)

(This piece was originally published in the Outsider Baseball Bulletin, Volume 1, No. 4, June 30, 2010.)

On a balmy late afternoon in February (February 22, 1912, to be exact), the Almendares and Habana clubs of La Liga Nacional de Base Ball de la República de Cuba faced each other in a regularly scheduled game.  A contest between “los eternos rivales,” the Yankees and Red Sox of the Cuban League, was always a big draw.  Several thousand fans packed the palm tree-lined Almendares Park, cheering, booing, gambling openly and constantly.  But it was not a playoff game or a key contest at the end of a tight pennant race.  It was not a no-hitter.  It didn’t even end with a decision, as it was called for darkness at the beginning of the tenth inning with the score knotted at 1 to 1.

It was, simply, a tense, exciting, and extremely well-played game that showcased the best baseball talent from outside organized baseball, along with some talent from within it.  Taking the mound for Almendares was the biggest star in Cuban baseball at the time, José Méndez, “El Diamante Negro.”  Working for Habana was Cyclone Joe Williams.  They formed quite a contrast.  Méndez, then 27, was not a large man, a wiry 5’10” with a powerful right arm, a brilliant fielder who could also play shortstop or third base when not pitching. His opponent, Williams, was 26, and would at 6’3” or 6’4” have towered over Méndez.  He had emerged from the Texas Colored League only two years previously. 

They were the two best pitchers in the Cuban League that winter:

          W-L   ERA    G    ST    CG  ShO    IP     H    HRA   BB    K
Méndez    9-5   1.91   19   13    13    2   136.7  114    5    43    92
Williams 10-7   1.68   21   16    12    0   155    117    3    66    80

Both were in their primes; both would, of course, end up in Cooperstown, as would two of Williams’s teammates, shortstop John Henry Lloyd and left fielder Pete Hill.  Matty McIntyre, the longtime Detroit Tigers outfielder (though currently with the White Sox), was in left field for Almendares.

What follows is simply a play-by-play description of the game, translated (freely, with a few embellishments and some additional information) from a Spanish account printed in the Havana newspaper Diario de la Marina (February 23, 1912).

FIRST INNING
    •Almendares
Armando Marsans of the Cincinnati Reds leads off with a base on balls.  Minor leaguer John Burke follows with a sacrifice, advancing Marsans to second.  Matty McIntyre of the Detroit Tigers triples, scoring Marsans. Longtime minor leaguer Juan Violá strikes out.  Four-time Cuban batting champ Regino García grounds to John Henry Lloyd, who throws to first baseman Bill Pettus for the out. 

     •Habana
Carlos Morán belts a line drive over the shortstop for what looks like a sure triple, but the Almendares left fielder, Rogelio Valdés, races over to cut it off and hold Morán to a single.  Morán immediately steals second.  Pete Hill strikes out.  Home Run Johnson walks, and on ball four Morán takes off for third, sliding in safely when García throws high.  Lloyd lofts a foul fly which Valdés drifts over to take, but Morán tags up and scores, tying the game.  Luis Padrón grounds out to short.

SECOND INNING
     •Almendares
Manuel Cueto (future Cincinnati Red) grounds to Williams, who tosses him out at first.  Valdés strikes out looking, never lifting his bat from his shoulder.  Méndez grounds out to the pitcher.

     •Habana
Ricardo Hernández pops up to Marsans at first.  Bruce Petway strikes out.  Williams grounds toward third base; the Almendares shortstop, Tomás Romañach, makes a beautiful play to his right and fires to first for the out.

THIRD INNING
     •Almendares
Romañach works Williams for a walk, but he’s stranded on first as “Cíclon” fans Marsans and Burke, and McIntyre flies to Hill in left field.

     •Habana
Méndez fans Pettus.  Morán strikes out with a vicious swing.  Hill does no better, and Méndez has struck out the side.

FOURTH INNING
     •Almendares
Violá knocks a roller to “Quijada” (Lloyd; the nickname comes from a musical instrument made from a donkey or horse’s jawbone, and refers to Lloyd’s very prominent chin), who throws him out at first.  García hits a comebacker to the mound, and Williams throws him out.  Cueto grounds out to Lloyd.

     •Habana
Grant Johnson dribbles a grounder to Romañach, who muffs it, Johnson getting to first safely.  Lloyd singles over second, Johnson stopping there.  Padrón, a power hitter, drops a sac bunt, advancing the two runners to second and third.  Ricardo Hernández slaps the ball to Méndez, who looks Johnson back before throwing to first for the out.  Petway grounds to Romañach, who tosses him out at first.

FIFTH INNING
     •Almendares
Rogelio Valdés grounds out to Johnson.  Méndez singles to right field.  Romañach pops up, García gathering it in behind the plate.  Marsans pops up to Morán at third.

     •Habana
Williams flies out to left.  Pettus grounds out to Méndez.  Morán singles to right for his second hit, but Méndez catches him napping off first to end the inning.

SIXTH INNING
     •Almendares
Burke swings and misses three straight times.  McIntyre grounds back to the pitcher for the second out.  Violá hits the ball on the nose, but lines straight into the glove of the center fielder Hernández.

     •Habana
Hill grounds to the third baseman Violá, who throws him out.  Johnson works Méndez for a pass.  Lloyd lines to center, but Burke makes the catch and holds Johnson at first.  Padrón flies to center for the third out.

SEVENTH INNING
     •Almendares
Regino García grounds out to Williams.  Cueto walks on four straight pitches.  Williams punches out Valdés.  On the third strike Cueto takes off for second, and Petway guns him down.

     •Habana
Ricardo Hernández leads off with a walk.  Petway lays down a bunt.  Méndez grabs it, whirls, and gets Hernández at second.  Williams swings and misses three times.  With Petway on first, Pettus smashes a line drive, but third baseman Violá spears it.

EIGHTH INNING
     •Almendares
Méndez tries to get on base with a bunt.  Williams dives for it and throws him out while still sprawled on the ground, prompting an ovation from the fans.  Then he strikes out Romañach and Marsans.

     •Habana
Morán beat out a grounder to short, his third hit of the day.  Hill bunts down the third base line.  Méndez pounces on it and throws him out at first, Morán getting to second.  Johnson grounds out to Romañach, advancing Morán to third with two out and the lefty-hitting John Henry Lloyd coming up.  Méndez walks him intentionally to get to the right-handed-hitting Luis Padrón, whom Méndez promptly fans to snuff out the threat and earn his own ovation.

NINTH INNING
     •Almendares
Burke walks.  Williams strikes out Matty McIntyre.  Violá hits a roller back to Williams, who fumbles it, but recovers in time to get the runner at first.  In the meantime Burke has motored all the way to third base, putting the winning run ninety feet away with two out and Regino García strolling to the plate.  He’s 37 and a somewhat pudgy 5’6”, but still dangerous with the stick, and Williams decides to walk him.  Minor leaguer Marty Krug, who will debut for the Red Sox in the spring, bats for Cueto.  Williams strikes him out, his tenth K of the game.

     •Habana
Méndez sets down Ricardo Hernández on strikes.  Petway knocks what should be a hit into center field, but Burke makes a great catch to deny him.  Williams follows with another solid blow to center, and once again Burke snares it, saving another hit and sending the game into extra innings.

TENTH INNING
     •Almendares
Rogelio Valdés comes to bat.  Williams throws one pitch for a ball and another for a strike before the umpire Eustaquio Gutiérrez calls the game due to darkness.

habana’s american players, 1911

On November 19, 1911, six African American baseball players arrived in Havana, Cuba, to play for the newly re-organized Habana Base Ball Club.  They posed for this photograph, printed in the Havana newspaper El Mundo on November 20, 1911.

Standing, L to R: Pete Hill, John Henry Lloyd, Grant “Home Run” Johnson, Walter Ball
Seated: Bruce Petway, Cyclone Joe Williams, Bill Pettus.

Although the quality of the image above is quite poor (having been printed, microfilmed, and finally scanned), if anyone ever comes up with an actual print of this photograph, it might turn out to be quite valuable.  You’re looking at a previously unknown (or little-known) image that includes three Hall of Famers plus three other very notable Negro league players.

Of the six players, five actually appeared for Habana during the 1911-12 winter season; the sixth, Walter Ball, returned to the United States on January 16, 1912, not having pitched an inning, as far as I can tell.  Here he is, on the passenger list of the S.S. Chalmette, bound for New Orleans:

1910 chicago giants

Courtesy of Todd Peterson, here’s a photo I had never seen before of the 1910 Chicago Giants, from the Twin City Star, July 21, 1910.

Standing, L to R: Walter Ball, Harry Moore, Steel Arm Johnny Taylor, Frank Leland, Bobby Winston, Joe Green, Danger Talbert

Seated, L to R: Nate Harris, Chappie Johnson, Bill Pettus, Cyclone Joe Williams, and Felix Wallace.

vital statistics: cyclone joe williams

I was surprised to realize that Cyclone Joe Williams’s death date is still widely and wrongly reported as March 12, 1946, including by the Hall of Fame.  In fact he didn’t pass away until February 25, 1951, as reported by Laurence Alpert (via John Holway in this Baseball Guru piece), who found his death certificate.

Several newspapers took note of Williams’s passing in 1951, including the Pittsburgh Courier on its March 10, 1951, front page, in an item authored by W. Rollo Wilson (“WRW”; apologies for the poor image):   



Joe Williams’s exact birth date, unsurprisingly, is a little less certain.  His marriage certificate, according to Holway, listed April 6, 1885.   His World War I and World War II draft cards, which he of course signed, say April 6, 1886.  And his death certificate, according to Alpert, gives April 6, 1887.

Here is his World War I card:

And here is his World War II card:

UPDATE 4:41 pm  Thought I would add the 1900 census record of the Williams family in Seguin, Texas, which gives Joe a birth date of May 1886:

UPDATE: 5:16 pm Also see the updated 2002 edition of James Riley’s Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues, which says on its very last page (952) that Williams was born April 6, 1886, and died February 25, 1951.

selling the negro leagues

Here is a passage from one of Ira Lewis’s “Passing Review” columns in the Pittsburgh Courier (September 11, 1926).  It’s a fascinating discussion of publicity strategies in black baseball.  The promoters and owners of clubs were often reluctant to hype their stars for fear of the individual players gaining too much bargaining power.  Lewis argues, however, that “smart management” recognizes the importance of making ballplayers into “box office attractions.”  The Homestead Grays, he says, finally broke through only when Cumberland Posey “got hep to the benefits of publicity and the wisdom of playing up his stars.”

Another takeaway from this piece: Lewis says of Joe Williams that “the Courier re-christened him from ‘Cyclone Joe’ Williams to ‘Smokey Joe’ Williams.”  So the change in nickname is confirmed as a conscious publicity strategy, apparently cooked up by the Courier in cahoots with Posey (who was himself a columnist for the Courier).

cyclone joe vs. smokey joe

I know which side of this eternal struggle I’m on.  But to shed light on the issue of Joe Williams’s nicknames, I did a little lazy research (ProQuest searches) in three black newspapers to see how often each nickname showed up.

This is not in the least scientific or exhaustive.  I made no attempt to catch every possible permutation of Williams’s name—I just searched for “Cyclone Joe Williams,” on the one hand, and “Smokey Joe Williams” (as well as “Smoky Joe Williams,” the more common spelling early on) on the other.  Excluded are such forms as “Cyclone Williams,” or “Cyclone Joe” or “Smokey Joe” without “Williams” attached.  The point was just to get a quick sense of any patterns.

In the Chicago Defender, “Smokey/Smoky Joe Williams” came up a total of 78 times, to 30 for “Cyclone Joe Williams.”  The imbalance was more extreme in the Pittsburgh Courier, where Cyclone Joe, with 27 mentions, loses out to Smokey/Smoky Joe’s whopping 230 hits.  The third black paper I checked, the New York Amsterdam News, was actually the most even of the trio, preferring Smokey/Smokey Joe 32 to 19.

More illuminating than the raw totals is how the nicknames are distributed through the years.  Here’s the Defender, by decade:

1910s: Cyclone Joe 19, Smokey Joe 6
1920s: Cyclone Joe 7, Smokey Joe 14
1930s: Cyclone Joe 4, Smokey Joe 26
1940s: Cyclone Joe 0, Smokey Joe 7
1950s: Cyclone Joe 0, Smokey Joe 6
1960s: Cyclone Joe 0, Smokey Joe 8
1970s: Cyclone Joe 0, Smokey Joe 10

The Courier:
1920s: Cyclone Joe 17, Smokey Joe 112
1930s: Cyclone Joe 3, Smokey Joe 71
1940s: Cyclone Joe 2, Smokey Joe 15
1950s: Cyclone Joe 1, Smokey Joe 15
1960s: Cyclone Joe 1, Smokey Joe 5
1970s: Cyclone Joe 1, Smokey Joe 8
1980s: Cyclone Joe 0, Smokey Joe 4
1990s: Cyclone Joe 0, Smokey Joe 1

The Amsterdam News:
1920s: Cyclone Joe 5, Smokey Joe 7
1930s: Cyclone Joe 6, Smokey Joe 12
1940s: Cyclone Joe 4, Smokey Joe 7
1950s: Cyclone Joe 0, Smokey Joe 2
1960s: Cyclone Joe 2, Smokey Joe 0
1970s: Cyclone Joe 1, Smokey Joe 3
1980s: Cyclone Joe 1, Smokey Joe 0

Looking at the 1910s, the only instances of “Smokey Joe” occur in the Defender in 1918.  Interestingly, one story about how the nickname was coined says it happened in a game against the New York Giants in October 1917.  No further instances of “Smokey [or Smoky] Joe Williams” appear in the Defender until 1925. 

Both the Courier and the Amsterdam News are archived starting in 1923, so combining the three papers we get:

1923: Cyclone Joe 3, Smokey Joe 0
1924: Cyclone Joe 10, Smokey Joe 0
1925: Cyclone Joe 2, Smokey Joe 10
1926: Cyclone Joe 4, Smokey Joe 28
1927: Cyclone Joe 2, Smokey Joe 30
1928: Cyclone Joe 6, Smokey Joe 38
1929: Cyclone Joe 2, Smokey Joe 30

To sum up: Joe Williams pitched for the Lincoln Giants from 1911 to 1923, for the Brooklyn Royal Giants in 1924, and for the Homestead Grays starting in 1925.  When Williams came to work for the Grays, the Courier not only reported on him quite a bit more than it had, it started calling him Smokey Joe almost exclusively, and this seems to have driven the switch from the previously dominant Cyclone Joe.  However, the nickname was not coined at this time, as it had been used as early as 1918.

A few more random observations: a search of the New York Times turned up two instances of “Cyclone Joe Williams” in the 1910s, and no “Smokey Joe Williams” until 1972.  The Chicago Tribune shows eight mentions of “Cyclone Joe” in 1910 and 1911, and likewise no “Smokey Joe” until 1972.  The San Antonio Light called him “Cyclone Joe Williams” five times in 1907 and 1908, and never Smokey Joe.  And Williams was known exclusively as “Ciclón” in Cuba when he pitched there in the early 1910s.

There.  If I have caused the phrases “Smokey Joe” and “Cyclone Joe” to degenerate into meaningless strings of sound for you, then my job is done.

irvin brooks, PR man

I had long ago (more than a year, in fact) promised to post an article from the Baltimore Afro-American authored by the Brooklyn Royal Giants’ great Irvin Brooks—the player who has mistakenly been called Chester Brooks in most histories and reference books.  I’ve finally managed to dig it up from my files, so here it is.

(Baltimore Afro-American, February 22, 1924)

benny kauff, 1920

The following is from Paul Wendt about Cyclone Joe Williams’s 13-strikeout game against the New York Giants in 1920:

You note Benny Kauff was the Giants’ fourth outfielder by playing time. He had been the regular centerfielder from 1916, but he was three months gone from the Giants and from the major leagues when he played in this October 9 game. (Larry Doyle had played his last mlb game, too.)

Paul points out that in February 1920 Kauff was charged with involvement in a car-theft ring.  Kauff still reported to the Giants and appeared in 55 games as the regular center fielder.  I’ll quote David Jones’s fine bio of Kauff at SABR’s Baseball Biography Project* on the rest of his 1920 season:

But with the ugly rumors surrounding Kauff and the entire sport that season, McGraw grew reluctant to play his talented center fielder and finally traded him to the Toronto Maple Leafs of the International League in early July. In the half-season he spent in Toronto, Kauff batted .343 and stole 28 bases, even as he endured taunts from fans. The auto-theft case still had not gone to trial, but at season's end McGraw reacquired Kauff anyway, telling reporters he expected to use him as his regular center fielder the following season.

It would appear, then, that Kauff’s reappearance with the Giants in October was more than just a temporary barnstorming stint, but was preparatory to his returning to the regular lineup the following season.  Commissioner Landis, however, banned him from baseball at the start of the 1921 season, pending the outcome of the auto theft charges.  In May a jury found Kauff not guilty, but Landis never lifted the ban.

(Larry Doyle’s final big league game was on October 2, 1920, one week earlier than the game against the Lincoln Giants.)

*-Also in Deadball Stars of the National League.