Agate Type

cuban stars vs. philadelphia giants, detroit, 1911

Brian Campf sent me this seemingly ordinary photograph from the early part of the century:



 
But zoom in on one of the posters in the shop window behind the family, to the left (their right):

It’s barely legible, but at the top the poster reads:

CUBANS
PHILA. GIANTS

Then, after a photograph of a ball player surrounded by unfortunately unreadable text, it says:

MACK PARK
(illegible) MAY (??)

There’s only a very narrow window of time in which this photograph could have been taken. The Philadelphia Giants disbanded in August, 1911; though there were later teams that used that name, they tended to remain on the east coast, rarely if ever venturing into the Midwest. Detroit’s Mack Park, semi-pro venue and later home of the Detroit Stars, was opened in May, 1910.

As it turns out, the Cuban Stars and the Philadelphia Giants met in Detroit for a five-game series, lasting from May 31 to June 4, 1911, for what the promoter John Roesink would call the “world’s semi-pro championship.” (Roesink would later own the Detroit Stars.) So the photo must have been taken in May, 1911, presumably in Detroit.

(Detroit Free Press, May 23, 1911, p. 10)

The “S. & S.” team was Mack Park's original home team, the Schmitz and Shroder semipro club, which Roesink managed. The Philadelphia Giants were returning to the east from a stay in Chicago; this was to be their last western trip. Managed by Grant “Home Run” Johnson, their lineup featured rookies Dick Redding and Louis Santop (called “Loftin,” his real last name, in the box scores), but the once-proud team was on its last legs.

Both teams had played in Detroit before. Back in 1909 the Giants had beaten Rube Foster’s Leland Giants two games out of three in Bennett Park, home of the Detroit Tigers. The Cuban Stars, who had appeared in Mack Park in July, 1910, were a big draw in Detroit, in large part due to the Tigers’ trips to Cuba in 1909 and 1910. Even though the Giants had some well-known players, my bet would be that the player pictured on the poster was probably one of the Cubans, most likely José Méndez, who had already received a fair amount of publicity in the United States by this time.

Méndez would win the first game, coming in to relieve J. F. Marlota in the fifth inning despite having pitched a complete game victory over the S. & S. the day before:

 

(Detroit Free Press, June 1, 1911, p. 10)

The Cubans would take the series handily, four games out of five, with Méndez picking up two of the victories and striking out 15 in 14 innings.

I don’t know of any other photo that (completely by accident, it seems) shows an advertisement for a Negro league game in the background. It appears to be unique in that respect.

Now if somebody could come up with a copy of that poster…

negro leagues on film

 

Hollywood hopefuls: Bruce Petway, Jack Johnson, Sam Crawford

 

Archivists at the University of Georgia have uncovered what seems to be the earliest known footage of African Americans playing baseball, dating from 1917.  It’s not professional or even semi-professional, but rather a game between two plantation teams in rural Georgia.

There are at least a couple of examples of actual Negro league teams being filmed around this time.  As I wrote a couple of years ago, on opening day at Giants Park in St. Louis in 1919, there were plans to film a game between the St. Louis Giants and the Mexico (Mo.) Grays, a white semipro team.  Although the game was rained out, it was played the next day (May 12, 1919).  If this film was shot, it hasn’t surfaced anywhere, so far as I can tell.

But even more intriguing than the Georgia film or the possible St. Louis Giants footage is another film project that came to fruition in 1921.

In April of that year, the news emerged that former world heavyweight champion Jack Johnson had agreed to make a movie for the Kansas City-based Andlauer Film Company:

(Kansas City Star, April 3, 1921, p. 20)

Although the Andlauer Company is often said to have been black-owned, that seems not to have been the case.  Founded by William Anthony “Billy” Andlauer, a (white) movie theater manager, photographer, and filmmaker, the company would become best-known for industrial, technical, and educational films of mostly local interest.  The Jack Johnson project may well have been the studio’s only foray into black-cast films for black audiences, at least as far as I’ve seen.  It was originally called The Heart of Jack Johnson, but was later retitled As the World Rolls On.

The New York Times article above refers to the film, saying that it contained “footage of an all-black Kansas team in the background.”  In fact, As the World Rolls On featured footage of actual NNL games involving the Kansas City Monarchs, Detroit Stars, and Chicago American Giants.  The games are integrated into the plot, and Negro league players, notably Sam Crawford, Bruce Petway, and Cristóbal Torriente, had roles in the film.

As the World Rolls On was extremely ambitious, especially for a race film at the time.  A detailed plot summary appeared in the Chicago Defender (August 20, 1921, p. 7).  An “industrious youth” named Joe Walker, who is “subject to sudden heart attacks,” vies for the hand of Molly, loyal assistant to the respected physician Dr. Saunders.  His romantic rival is the vicious bully Tom Atkins, who leads a gang of hooligans and enjoys beating up on the “weaker, smaller” Joe.  During one such beatdown, the former heavyweight champ Jack Johnson just happens to be nearby, taking his two nieces for a walk and lecturing them on frontier history in front of the Cyrus E. Dallin statue The Scout, in Kansas City’s Penn Valley Park.

Johnson, hearing the disturbance, rushes to help Joe.  He easily dispatches the assailants—being Jack Johnson and all—and leaves them “all stretched out motionless on the ground, due to the whipping Johnson has given them.”  There follows a Karate Kid sequence in which Johnson takes on Joe Walker as his protégé and sparring partner.  He gets Joe to quit smoking and teaches him “physical and breathing exercises.”  In the course of all this the ex-champ “displays his powerful superhuman strength and scientific boxing ability.”  Joe, meanwhile, “becomes a healthy man and an athlete.”

And now baseball enters the picture:

“About this time the National Colored League baseball games are in progress at the ball park.  In a game between the Kansas City Monarchs and the Detroit Stars (actual scenes) Sam Crawford, captain of the Monarchs, sprains his arm and finds himself in a tight place owing to illness and injuries to his pitching staff.  He does not know how the game can be completed without a pitcher.  Accidentally glancing in one of the boxes, to his pleasant surprise he sees Joe with Molly.  Knowing Joe’s ability as an amateur pitcher, he appeals to Joe to finish the game.  Joe agrees, puts on a uniform, pitches a wonderful game and knocks a home run in the ninth inning which wins the game.

“The Elks’ lodge of which Joe is a member is so enthusiastic over Joe’s triumph that the members invite him as the honored guest to a reception given the following Sunday at the ball park.  The Chicago Giants are the Monarchs’ opponents (actual scenes).  During this reception Nelson Crews, editor of the leading Colored publication, presents the Monarch players with silver monogramed [sic] buckles and belts on behalf of the Elks.”

Nelson Crews was the editor of the Kansas City Sun; it’s actually Rube Foster’s American Giants, not Joe Green’s Chicago Giants, who appear in the film.  The plot continues with romance, conspiracy, a trial scene, gunfire, and more fighting before Joe finally vanquishes Tom and marries Molly.  Jack Johnson provides his blessing and a thousand-dollar check for the newlyweds.

A piece in the Baltimore Afro-American (December 9, 1921, p. 5) provides a little more information about the film’s baseball content:

“This picture was made by W. A. Andlauer in Kansas City early in September of this year.  Besides an all-star cast of colored actors, Johnson is supported by the famous Negro big league teams with Rube Foster and his Chicago Giants, Sam Crawford and his Kansas City Monarchs, and the Detroit Stars.”

Along with Jack Johnson,  Blanche Thompson (Molly), and Reed Thomas (Joe Walker), cast listings also include Sam Crawford, Bruce Petway, Rube Foster, and “Torrientti”—Cristóbal Torriente, touted as “the Black Babe Ruth” in one ad for the movie—all playing themselves.

We can narrow down the possibilities for which games feature in the film.  It so happens that both the Detroit Stars and the Chicago American Giants visited Kansas City only once in 1921.  The Stars played a five-game series there, starting on July 23.  The Monarchs swept the series, with Sam Crawford securing complete-game victories in the first game (a 5 to 1 win on July 23) and the last (5 to 2 on July 26).  Since the plot involves Crawford pitching, it seems like a good bet that footage was shot in one or both of those games.

The American Giants played six games in Kansas City from September 3 through September 8, taking four of them.

According to sources at the UCLA Special Collections Library, “following the film’s early showings, Andlauer added 500 feet of baseball footage and ‘made one reel all baseball and parades taking all of the shots pertaining to players and parades out of the story’ to make a one-reel supplement.  Andlauer wrote, ‘This makes the action better and we know improves the film’.”

(New York Age, September 10, 1921)

As the World Rolls On was released on September 10, 1921, and played all over the country, including New York, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Richmond, Baltimore, Louisville, Dallas, and Philadelphia, well into 1922.  Oddly enough, it was apparently never shown in Chicago, despite the appearance of Rube Foster and the American Giants.

Today, as far as I’m aware, there are no extant prints of As the World Rolls On, which is an enormous shame.  From a baseball perspective, this was an astonishing document of Negro league history, a real treasure.  What wouldn’t you give to see actual footage of these teams—not mention watch Sam Crawford, Rube Foster, or Bruce Petway act in a movie?

I was able to find one final clue that might be useful to anyone trying to track down a copy of the film.  In November 1923, Andlauer Film Productions placed an ad in the Chicago Defender trying to sell three prints of the film, along with title cards and other materials (it was a silent film, of course), for $850.

(Chicago Defender, November 24, 1923, p. 6)

UPDATE 3:26 pm  I created a separate page with the entire plot summary of As the World Rolls On from the Chicago Defender (August 20, 1921, p. 7).

recognition for historic negro league ballparks - or not

There was good news and bad news this year about historical markers for Negro league ballparks.

First, the good news.  The Detroit Stars’ Hamtramck Stadium, the 1930s successor to Mack Park and one of the surprisingly large number* of Negro league parks still standing, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, thanks to the efforts of Gary Gillette and others. 

(*-See Kevin Johnson’s great article in the latest Outsider Baseball Bulletin on Negro league ballparks, drawn from his research on the upcoming Negro League Ballparks Database.)

Photo by Paul Healey, from Project Ballpark.

And the bad news.  Unfortunately, Central Baseball Park, the home of the Pittsburgh Keystones and other teams from 1920 to 1925, was denied an historical marker by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.  According to the Commission, the application did not meet the following guidelines:

1)    The person, place, or event to be marked is of statewide or national historical significance rather than that of local or regional interest.
2)    People, places, and events already marked with existing monuments or markers receive less favorable consideration for a PHMC historical marker.

In other words, the Keystones weren’t that big a deal, and the state’s already got some markers commemorating the Negro leagues. 

In reality, I think the problems are:

1)    The information Dr. McDonald Williams and I gave the Commission directly contradicts the Greenlee Field marker and might be seen as somewhat diminishing that landmark’s significance.
2)    They’re having trouble seeing past Pittsburgh’s many Negro league heavyweights like Josh Gibson and the Homestead Grays, and figure that any team or player that doesn’t measure up to them isn’t worth commemorating.

It’s their commission, and they obviously have constraints on the number of markers they can manufacture and place.  But as far as current scholarship knows, Central Park, and not Greenlee Field, was the first black-owned and black-built major league baseball park in the country.  Giants Park in St. Louis was built in 1919 at the behest of the team’s African American owners, but we don’t know what architect or contractor was responsible.  Unlike Central Park, Giants Park was not built in a black neighborhood, so it would seem less likely that a black-owned firm was involved.  Mohawk Park was built in 1914 in Schenectady, New York, by the Mohawk Giants’ white ownership.  Hilldale Park in Darby, Pennsylvania, was built as an amateur park, not originally for a professional team.

Moreover, Central Park was the African American architect Louis Bellinger’s first major commission.  In fact, as I understand it, the ballpark was his first known building, period.

It’s just my opinion, but I think that all this firmly establishes Central Park’s state and national significance. 

There was more to the Negro Leagues than a few big stars and teams from the 1930s and 1940s.  Black professional baseball was a broad-based cultural and economic phenomenon; it represented the strivings of whole communities, a whole people.  Josh Gibson, the Grays and Crawfords, and Gus Greenlee could only accomplish what they did because of those who came before them.  A marker commemorating Central Park would acknowledge that Greenlee Field was not a lone, heroic effort, but rather the culmination of the desires and efforts of fans, players, and promoters over several decades.

Map prepared by the G.M. Hopkins Company in 1923 (from Historic Pittsburgh).

fred long

Fred Long was a Detroit Stars outfielder in the early 1920s who went on to become a legendary college football coach.  I had never seen a photograph of Long, but recently ran across this in a July 10, 1948, story about Long in the Chicago Defender:
 


Then I checked this very familiar photograph of the 1920 Detroit Stars, in which several players remain unidentified:



In some books, the middle player in the back row is identified as Charles “Chick” Harper:



I don’t think I have any other photos of Harper, so it’s impossible for me to say.  But that player, to my mind, looks an awful lot like Long:


UPDATE 4:44 p.m.  Here’s a photo of Fred Long in 1918, as a student at Millikin University in his hometown of Decatur, Illinois (from the Chicago Defender Digital Edition, 2010):

UPDATE 12/7/2012 In the comments Badgerhistory links to a fantastic photograph of the Millikin football team in 1916, with Fred Long in the middle of the front row:

pete hill’s historical marker, annotated

As you may have heard, the state of Virginia is placing a marker commemorating Pete Hill on the grounds of the Cedar Grove Baptist Church in Buena, Culpeper County, Virginia.  It joins a batch of new markers at various sites related to African American history, women’s suffrage, and the War of 1812—the most notable, perhaps, being a marker for Henrietta Lacks.

I worked with some folks at the Virginia Department of Historic Resources to develop the text of the marker.  Here’s the final version:

PETE HILL (1882-1951)

John Preston “Pete” Hill, Negro League baseball player and manager, was born nearby, on 12 Oct., probably 1882, and likely to formerly enslaved parents. Banned from whites-only major leagues, Hill became a star outfielder for African American teams, notably the Philadelphia Giants and Chicago American Giants.  A Cuban League 1910/11 winter-season batting champion (with a .365 average), Hill hit 28 home runs for the Detroit Stars in 1919 (when Babe Ruth hit 29 in more games), marking Hill as among black baseball’s earliest power hitters. Hill died on 19 Dec. 1951 and was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006.

I wrote a first draft, then we edited and compressed it down to 101 words so it would fit on the sign.  It’s not perfect, but it does the job, I think.

I thought I would go ahead and provide an annotated version of the marker text, so you can see the sources and the reasoning behind some of the choices we made.

John Preston “Pete” Hill, Negro League baseball player and manager, was born nearby, on 12 Oct., probably 1882, and likely to formerly enslaved parents.

A vast constellation of documents confirms John Preston Hill’s identity as the ballplayer Pete Hill, and Hill’s place and date of birth.  Most important are his World War I draft card (which gives October 12, 1882, but no place of birth), his death certificate (October 12, 1882, Virginia), the 1900 U.S. census (October 1882, Virginia), the 1920 U.S. census (ca. 1884, Virginia), and his Form SS-5, Hill’s application for a Social Security number (October 12, 1884, Rapidan, Virginia).  (Another Social Security document lists his birth date as October 12, 1883.)  A 1916 passenger list gives his birthplace as “Buena Vista, Va.,” which might be a mistaken reference to Buena, a small community just north of Rapidan in Culpeper County.  Hill’s family in Pittsburgh was pretty well-known, and coverage in the Pittsburgh Courier, along with census records, confirmed their origins in Culpeper County and neighboring Orange County.

We don’t have specific documentation of his parents’ slave status before the end of the Civil War, but they were both apparently born in Virginia in the 1850s, so it seems highly likely that they were enslaved.

Banned from whites-only major leagues, Hill became a star outfielder for African American teams, notably the Philadelphia Giants and Chicago American Giants.  A Cuban League 1910/11 winter-season batting champion (with a .365 average), Hill hit 28 home runs for the Detroit Stars in 1919 (when Babe Ruth hit 29 in more games), marking him as among black baseball’s earliest power hitters.

My own compilation of Cuban League box scores from the 1910/11 season (unpublished as of yet, but hopefully soon to be posted at Baseball-Reference.com) indicates a .391 average for Hill (36 for 92), but .365 (35 for 96) is the official figure cited in Jorge S. Figueredo, Cuban Baseball: A Statistical History, 1878-1961).   The Cuban League at that time was notorious for “adjusting” statistics after the season, particularly those pertaining to the prestigious batting title, so I tend to think that the statistics I compile straight from the box scores are more reliable than official numbers.  Nevertheless I decided that an historical marker required official sourcing whenever possible. 

Early drafts included the oft-cited factoid that in 1911 Hill hit safely in 115 of 116 games, but I could find only secondary sources for that, and decided to go with his remarkable home run total in 1919 instead. It’s a new piece of information, one that doesn’t appear in any of the standard reference books, statistical compilations, or Negro league histories.  As such it stands in for the new wave of Negro league research, one that obviously works a lot better for a general audience than trying to explain in a pithy phrase or two that he walked a lot or had a high on-base percentage or played a bunch of his career in an offense-killing home park, which are the other major results of recent research.  For whatever reason, until very recently nobody had done extensive research on the Detroit Stars’ 1919 season (or at least nobody had published it), so Hill’s home run production that year had been entirely forgotten.

It was, however, known at the time. Hill’s home run count was continually publicized by the Detroit Stars as the 1919 season progressed.  Hill himself touted it in a press release printed in the Chicago Defender (January 10, 1920):

(For the whole story of Hill’s 1919 season, see my article, “1919: A Tale of Two Sluggers,” in the Outsider Baseball Bulletin, June  8, 2010, as well as the two-part series, “The Year Before the Negro National League,” also in the OBB, September 1 & September 8, 2010.)

By the way, this is the original sentence I wrote: “His total of 28 home runs for the Detroit Stars in 1919 marked the end of the deadball era in black baseball.”  But the people at the Department of Historic Resources thought that the reference to the “deadball era” would confuse those who weren’t baseball history buffs.  In explaining what I meant, I mentioned Babe Ruth’s 29 home runs the same year, and we ended up deciding that Ruth’s was a name everyone recognized, and that comparing Hill’s season to his would help the uninitiated grasp the significance of Hill’s accomplishments.

I did have some reservations about the comparison: Pete Hill was really nothing like Babe Ruth, in kind or degree, and of course I dislike the old habit of talking about Negro leaguers as the black version of some white star or other.  But, just as Spottswood Poles was called the “black Ty Cobb” by his manager Ed Bolden, it was Pete Hill who compared himself to Ruth.  As the comparison was made in contemporary sources and by the subject himself, it seemed legitimate.

Hill died on 19 Dec. 1951 and was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006.

His death date has been confirmed by his death certificate and by a Fay Young column in the Chicago Defender (December 29, 1951), in which Young notes the death of “Pete Hill, the grand old man of baseball,” on “Wednesday of last week [December 19] in Buffalo, N. Y., where in recent years he had made his home.”  So far this is the only contemporary newspaper mention of  Hill’s death I’ve been able to find.

“baby riggins” and his dad

Orville Riggins, Jr., died on November 30, 2010.  (See comments from his family on this post.)  Here he is, “Baby Riggins,” a little short of eleven months old, cheering on his father in a Detroit Stars/Columbus Buckeyes game at Mack Park, Detroit, on Sunday, June 12, 1921:

Although Baby Riggins was Orville Jr., his father the ballplayer actually went by the name Arvell Riggins. There’s a fair amount of evidence for this, most importantly his own signature on his World War I draft card:

There are also census records and a number of newspaper references with varying spellings (Arvil, Arvel, etc.), as well as his death certificate, for which his wife was the informant:

 

Although he was sometimes called Orville in the papers, too, (as well as Bill and Bo), it seems pretty unlikely to me that a relatively common name like Orville would be consistently misspelled more or less the same way, unless he was going around telling people that’s how it should be spelled.

mack park, 1929

Again from Kevin Johnson, a Sanborn map of the Detroit Stars’ Mack Park in 1929.   Lefthanded power hitters such as Turkey Stearnes and Edgar Wesley flourished in Detroit in the 1920s, and it’s easy to see why, with the cosy dimensions in right field.

 This was a fire insurance map, and it would come in handy quite soon, as on July 7 of that very year the grandstands burned down before a doubleheader with the Kansas City Monarchs, injuring a hundred people, causing a loss of $12,000 to the park’s operator, John Roesink, and destroying a limousine belonging to the Stars’ manager, Bingo DeMoss.

(Chicago Defender, July 13, 1929; click to enlarge)