Agate Type

which bell in cuba?

In the 1920s the Kansas City Monarchs had two right-handed pitchers from Texas named Bell, Cliff and William. They were unrelated, though the press liked to call them the “Bell Brothers.” William, nicknamed “W.” supposedly because he won so often, was easily the better of the two. Cliff did have one advantage over him: according to everybody from James Riley to Jorge Figueredo, Cliff starred in Cuba for several seasons. Riley says that “in four winters in Cuba [Cliff Bell] recorded a 15-17 ledger.” He also says that William Bell “spent the 1928-29 winter with Havana in the Cuban League and tied with Dolph Luque for the lead in wins with nine.”

Jorge Figueredo’s more authoritative Cuban League encyclopedias have only Cliff Bell in Cuba for four seasons—1927-28, 1928-29, 1929-30, and 1930-31—for a total won-loss record of 25-17. In 1928-29, according to Figueredo’s accounting, Bell led the league with 9 wins to Luque’s 8.

I hate to have to do this to poor Cliff, but…as it turns out, the Bell who pitched in the Cuban league in at least the first three of those winter seasons (1927-28, 1928-29, and 1929-30) was in fact William Bell. Here, for example, is a photo of three Habana players from Diario de la Marina, November 25, 1927: William Bell, Miguel Angel González, and Sam Streeter.

 

Passenger lists show William Bell returning to the United States immediately after the Cuban winter season closed in 1928, 1929, and 1930. Here he is, accompanied by Sam Streeter and Jud Wilson, sailing from Havana to Key West on January 24, 1928 two days after the Cuban League’s last game (on January 22):

Here are William Bell and Jud Wilson, travelling from Havana to Key West on January 8, 1929—again, two days after the Cuban League ended, on January 6, 1929.

And here is William Bell, this time by himself, sailing for Key West on February 10, 1930, a little more than two weeks after the closing of the Cuban season on January 23, 1930.

I haven’t been able to find anybody returning from Cuba following the 1930/31 winter season, so I couldn’t say (right now) which Bell played that year.

A couple of notes:

• In the Negro leagues, William Bell played for six pennant-winning teams (1923-25 and 1929 Monarchs, and the 1933 and 1935 Crawfords). His Habana teams added two Cuban League pennants (1927-28 and 1928-29) to his haul.

• Figueredo gives Cliff Bell the nickname of “Campanita” (which just means “little bell”)—I haven’t confirmed it, but I wonder if this wasn’t really bestowed on William while he played in Cuba.

clarence orme

Stefanie Caruthers writes that her great-uncle, Clarence Orme (above), played baseball for the Kansas City Giants in the 1930s. Born on April 3, 1899, in Chamois, Missouri, Clarence Charles Orme moved to Kansas City, Kansas, in 1917, and lived in the area for the rest of his life, working much of the time as a butcher in meatpacking plants. He was a “lanky,” 6’6” infielder, nicknamed “Clarence Longshot,” and when he played baseball, Stefanie says, he was sometimes paid with live chickens.

Here’s an article from 1933 about his play with the Kansas City Giants:

(Kansas City Plaindealer, July 14, 1933, p. 5)

He passed away in 1968, and until now knowledge of his baseball career seems to have survived only in his family. A lot has been lost. We don’t know exactly how long or how much he played, or all the teams he played for, although presumably most or all of them were in the Kansas City area. But we can identify a few possible traces of Clarence Orme’s life in baseball.

For example, it could be that, much earlier in his life, he played for the Kansas City Monarchs.

During a three-game series with the Cuban Stars in June, 1920, the Monarchs, in just their second month of league play ever, were still juggling their lineup and trying out (and discarding) players left and right. Edgar Washington was still playing first base for them, and Bullet Rogan and Dobie Moore were yet to join the team. With their regular third baseman, Carroll Mothell, injured, on June 6 the Monarchs brought in a guy named “Armes” to hold down the hot corner against José Leblanc and the Cubans.

Leblanc struck out eight with his spitter, Armes went hitless and committed three errors, and the Cubans came out on top, 5 to 3.

(Kansas City Times, June 7, 1920)

The next day “Armes” switched positions with one of the team’s stars, George Carr, the new guy going to second and Carr taking over third. Armes still couldn't get a hit, and he was replaced in the middle of the game by a pitcher, Zack Foreman, but he managed to avoid any damaging bobbles in the field. he The Monarchs still fell short, 6 to 2.

Although it’s still “Armes” in the box score, in the game story we get a reference to “Ornes, a local player, being sent to second.”

(Kansas City Journal, June 8, 1920)

After a rainout on June 8, the two clubs managed to play off the third game on June 9. Ornes (as he appears now in the box score) got a third chance, still failing to get a hit, but (as analysis of the box score shows) drawing two walks and scoring a run. The Monarchs pounded the Cubans 11 to 5.

(Kansas City Times, June 10, 1920)

Researching the 1920 Negro National League years ago, at first I thought this was the Cuban infielder Joaquín Arumí (who also appears in some Cuban sources as Arumís). But Arumí doesn’t appear for the Monarchs until July, and besides there’s the remark in the KC Journal that “Ornes” was a “local player.” In the Seamheads DB, he currently appears as Ornes (no first name).

Stefanie thinks that “Ornes”/”Armes” is definitely her uncle, and I agree that Clarence Orme is certainly the best candidate we’ve got.

Also: there was a player named “Clarence Ora” with the Cleveland Cubs in 1932, about whom nothing is known. Since Clarence Orme was still active the following season in Kansas City, he would seem to be a possibility here as well.

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).

not all ball players are broke: zack foreman of the kansas city monarchs

Note: The following essay was originally published in the Outsider Baseball Bulletin, October 6, 2010.

“News reaches this office that Zack Foreman is dead.  The letter does not state the cause.  Zack, the fans will remember, was with the Monarchs this summer.  He and his brother own a whole town down in Oklahoma.  Both have money.  Zack purchased a Locomobile recently.  One day when he was playing in Kansas City he handed Rube Foster a small package and asked him to hold it for a minute.  Some one brushed against Rube and the package fell to the ground and broke open.  Rube noticed some money and wondered what was coming off.   Zack was gone so long Rube opened the package to fix it up right and here is what the big fellow found in what he was holding: Twenty-one hundred dollars in $1 bills and seven $50 bills.  When Zack returned Foster told him to let him know the next time because he (Foster) did not want to be responsible for any such sum as that.  Zack waved his hand and said, ‘Oh, that’s a small amount.’  And some fans think all ball players are broke.”
                --Frank Young, Chicago Defender, October 8, 1921

Funny how packages of money are so liable to burst open randomly like that.  Anyway, Zack Foreman, Kansas City Monarchs pitcher during their first two seasons (1920 and 1921), was probably a wealthy young man.  A Locomobile was a very high-end luxury car; the Model 48, introduced in 1919, cost an astonishing $10,000 (the equivalent of $130,000 in 2011).

 


So where did the money come from?  Did Zack and his brother really “own a whole town down in Oklahoma”?  And why did he die so young—only 27, rich, a professional athlete?
   
Zachariah Foreman, Jr., was born in July, 1893, near Redland in the Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory, just west of Fort Smith, Arkansas.  His father, Zack Sr., was born in the same area in the 1840s, not much more than a decade after the infamous Trail of Tears forced the majority of the Cherokee people west to the Indian Territory for good.  What’s often forgotten today is that wealthy Cherokees, like other affluent Southerners of the time, kept slaves—and those slaves accompanied them to the new territory.  Zack Sr. was thus born into slavery.  After the Civil War this black population attached to the Cherokee Nation became known as Cherokee freedmen.  A bitter controversy about the tribal status of their descendents continues to this day.
   
Whether or not the elder Zack thought of himself as a Cherokee (I’d guess he did), he was probably the sharpest businessman in the Cherokee Nation in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.  One of the main sources for his early career is the oral testimony of a white man from Sequoyah County named J. J. Cape, collected in the 1930s by the Federal Writers Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA).  Cape tells the Zack Foreman story like he was Jack and the Beanstalk.  No magic beans, but it all starts with a young boy and a cow, in this case a lame cow left behind by some men taking a herd to market. From a very young age Zack, presumably still a slave, had to work to support his widowed mother.  Sensing opportunity, he took charge of the abandoned cow and nursed her back to health.  The cow turned out to be pregnant, and when she gave birth to a calf, Zack Foreman had the beginnings of his own herd. 
   
Cape claimed that Zack Foreman, Sr., never learned to read or write, but still managed to make himself a successful cattleman and pillar of the community, eventually becoming “the wealthiest man, white or black, in the Cherokee Nation,” according to the Indianapolis Freeman (November 28, 1891).  He married a young schoolteacher named Mattie, started a family, built a store and a cotton gin.  When the Kansas City Southern railroad bypassed the small black community where the Foremans lived, Zack convinced them to build an extra track, a “spur,” linking his property to the main line.  He gave everybody in town work scraping and grading the road and laying the ties, allowing those who owed him money to pay off their debts this way, while the company put down the rails.  That way he could ship cattle or cotton directly from his land.  Thus Zack Foreman Sr. became “the only Negro in the United States at that time who privately owned a railroad.”
   
Their small town became known as Foreman, or sometimes Foreman’s Spur, and acquired a U.S. post office on October 31, 1898.  Mattie Foreman became the postmistress.  Every year on August 4 the small town held an Emancipation Proclamation Picnic, featuring barbecue, games, dancing, red lemonade.  “Zack and his wife were always crowned king and queen of the festival,” Cape recalled.  “They rode a pair of black horses and passed in review before the crowd after the crowning.  Everyone loved Zack and Mrs. Foreman.”
   
Zack Foreman Sr. died on August 5, 1916, the day after the Emancipation celebration.  According to the Fort Gibson New Era, “His funeral was very largely attended, blacks, whites, and Indians being present.”  He left behind four sons (Sheridan, Roscoe, Zack Jr., and Dewey) and two daughters (Rhoda and Urah), and a fortune worth at least $12,500, according to the newspapers.  That is more than a quarter of a million dollars in today’s money.
   
Zack Foreman Jr. grew up under very different circumstances than his father.  According to Phil Dixon, he attended Langston University, the first (and only) black college in Oklahoma.  How he became a professional ballplayer is unknown, though one possibility is that he came into contact with ballplayers in the Army.  There’s no direct evidence he was a veteran, but there were several on the Monarchs, of course (Bullet Rogan, Dobie Moore, Robert Fagan, Lemuel Hawkins). There is a piece of circumstantial, negative evidence in the fact that no draft card for Zack Foreman has surfaced.  One of the main reasons someone would not have filled out a draft card is if he were already in the military before the draft, having enlisted in the regular Army; and the 25th Infantry, the source for much of the Monarchs team, was regular Army.  None of the other Monarchs who had served in the 25th registered for the draft, either.
   
Whether or not he had been in the Army, by January 1920 Zack Foreman was back in Foreman, and he was married to a schoolteacher, like his father had been.  That June he appeared in several Negro National League games for the Kansas City Monarchs, though he didn’t see out the season with them.  In 1921 he became a semi-regular in the rotation, and won more often than he lost, finishing 7-4, 4.23.  As a pitcher he was evidently a soft tosser, with good control but very few strikeouts.  In July 1921 his cousin Sylvester Foreman joined the team as a catcher; unlike Zack, he would go on to a decade-long career in the Negro leagues.

  
Zack Foreman (L) and his cousin Sylvester, both members of the 1921 Kansas City Monarchs.
   
Zack’s last appearance with the Monarchs was on August 6 in Kansas City.  He was trounced 9 to 4 by the sad-sack Chicago Giants, exiting the game after eight innings, having given up 11 hits and eight runs and striking out no one.  It’s unclear whether he was injured or had simply been released by the Monarchs. Either way, he was in Foreman on Saturday, September 17, visiting family, while Sylvester continued with the Monarchs.

After midnight he engaged in a poker game at the gin house his father had built.  Between 4 and 5 in the morning a dispute arose.  Foreman jumped up from the table and put his hand in his pocket.  One of the other players, a man in his mid-thirties named John Foye, rushed at Foreman with a knife, and said, “Zack, don’t come out with nothing—if you do, I’ll cut your goddamn head off.”

“You might as well cut, because I’m coming out,” Foreman replied, and he drew a pistol.  After a tense moment, Foye and his brother-in-law ran out of the room.  Then Foreman put the gun in the scabbard in his overalls and went out after them.  Foye was waiting for him around the corner of the house, and shot him as he walked by.  The bullet entered the back of his head and lodged just behind his right eye.  He was taken to the porch of a nearby house, where he died within two hours, just yards from his father’s cotton gin.

It took a sheriff’s posse several hours and “a hard chase” to track down Foye, finally capturing him in nearby Cottonwood.  After several trials and appeals over the next several years, he was finally found guilty of manslaughter in the first degree, and sentenced to four years in the penitentiary.
   
By 1930, Zack’s older brother Roscoe had become the postmaster at Foreman, their mother’s old position; but the post office was shut down on August 31, 1936, swallowed up by the Depression and the Dust Bowl that decimated the local economy and led to mass migration out of Oklahoma.  When you look up “Foreman, Oklahoma,” on Google Maps, you find a few buildings or houses in the area, so there is still at least a hint of the long-ago African-American community.  What became of the Foremans I don’t know; but the remains of Zacks Sr. and Jr. must still be down there somewhere, perhaps in a family cemetery no one remembers.

P.S.  Since this originally ran in the OBB, I have found out that Zack left descendants; Phil Dixon went to college with his granddaughter, and promises to tell the real story about Zack’s life and death in a future book.

schorling park, chicago: may 27, 1923

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 26:  American Giants 3, Monarchs 2

May 27:  American Giants 5, Monarchs 4

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

May 29:  American Giants 7, Monarchs 4

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

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

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

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

 

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

foster and méndez, 1924 world series

Regarding the decisive Game 10 of the 1924 World Series, in which the Monarchs’ 37-year-old player-manager José Méndez made a surprise start and shut out Hilldale on three hits despite suffering from a “viral infection” (Larry Lester, Baseball’s First Colored World Series, p. 175), John Holway wrote the following:

In the final game the Monarch manager, 38-year-old Jose Mendez, one of Cuba’s greatest pitchers 15 years earlier, had no one left to start on the mound.  “Well, Darling,” Foster smiled, “how do you feel yourself?”  Mendez gulped.  “If you say so,” he said, “I do it.”  Foster called every pitch for him from the bench and Mendez hurled a three-hitter to beat young Holsey “Scrip” Lee 5-0, and take the series. (Blackball Stars, p. 32)

I’d always thought this story sounded somewhat unlikely, given that Méndez was himself the veteran of many big games and hardly seemed the type to “gulp” at the prospect of a high-pressure situation.  I suspected (though of course without knowing for sure) that it emanated from Foster himself.  I haven’t checked every contemporary newspaper thoroughly to see if this story, or some hint of it, made it into print at the time.  But I did just run across this passage in the Philadelphia Tribune (November 22, 1924), from an article entitled “‘Rube’ Foster Comments on the World’s Series”:

So Foster himself didn’t claim it was his idea for Méndez to start, nor did he claim to have called pitches the whole game.  And I’m pretty sure that, had those things really happened, Foster would not have hesitated to take credit for them.

It’s entirely possible that there’s some truth to it: maybe, for instance, Méndez consulted Foster about how to pitch to certain Hilldale hitters.  This, of course, is hardly the same thing that the original story claims.  Plus it’s not clear that Foster would have known the Hilldale lineup all that much better than Méndez; two of the starting lineup that day had been teammates of Méndez’s recently (George Carr with the Monarchs, 1920-1922, and Frank Warfield with Santa Clara in the previous winter’s Cuban League).  Warfield, Clint Thomas, and Biz Mackey had all played in the NNL for multiple seasons fairly recently, so Méndez would have had as much chance to see them as Foster.  Maybe Foster would have known more about his fellow Texans Louis Santop and George Johnson.  On the whole though, the notion that Foster babysat Méndez through the Series-clinching victory is probably exaggerated.

he ain’t heavy, he’s my brother

I’m starting a new category called “Unsolved Mysteries,” which will include interesting but unresolved research questions (or half-baked research, if you prefer)*.  The following is from the same Rollo Wilson column that provided the José Méndez bit the other day (Pittsburgh Courier, October 11, 1924):

I don’t think anybody’s ever put anything in print about Oscar “Heavy” Johnson’s having a ballplaying brother.  According to Wilson, Heavy’s brother played for both the Indianapolis ABCs and the Dayton Marcos, but I don’t have any leads there—Louis “Dicta” Johnson and Tom Johnson, both well-known players who weren’t related to Heavy Johnson and whose biographies don’t fit Wilson’s description above, were the only men with that last name to play for C. I. Taylor’s ABCs.  William “Big C” or “Wise” Johnson played for the Marcos in 1920; but that team existed at least from 1917 through 1926, and I don’t have rosters for most of those years.

Working the Atchison, Kansas, angle, I found Oscar Johnson’s family in the 1900 U.S. Census and the 1895 and 1905 Kansas State Census.  They’re easy to find: there were at least three black Oscar Johnsons born in Kansas of roughly Heavy Johnson’s age, but only one can be connected to Atchison.  Here they are in the 1895 Kansas State Census, living in Atchison:

And in the 1900 United States Census, again in Atchison:

The parents, Frank and Harriet, were born in Virginia before the Civil War, almost certainly as slaves.  Their first few children were born in Virginia as well; going by the census data here, they must have moved to Kansas sometime between the birth of Cynthia (November 1883) and Harrison (March 1888).

And in the 1905 Kansas State Census, still living in Atchison:

Their states of birth were on the following page, which I’m not reproducing here, but they match the information in the earlier records, with the parents and older children born in Virginia, the younger children (including Oscar) born in Kansas.

So Oscar’s brothers were named, in order of age: James, Edward, John, Frank Jr., Harrison, and Samuel.

According to the 1900 census, Oscar’s mother had by then borne 11 children, with 9 surviving.  In 1900, six were living with them: Matilda, Cynthia, Harrison, Samuel, Beulah, and Oscar.  Three of the older siblings reappear in the 1905 census (James, Edward, and Frank Jr.), which completes the nine children living in 1900.  If these numbers are accurate, then Oscar’s older brother John, listed as 16 back in 1895, seems to have passed away by 1900, as did another child, unnamed in any of these records.  And by 1905, two other children, Samuel and Beulah, are not living with the family.

Unfortunately, most of these names—James Johnson, Edward Johnson, John Johnson, Frank Johnson Jr.—are extremely common and hard to trace.  But I have found a World War I draft card for a Benjiman [sic] Harrison Johnson, born in Atchison, Kansas, on March 10, 1889 (the same month, though one year off from the birthdate for Oscar’s brother Harrison given in the 1900 census), and living in Youngstown, Ohio:

I have no way of knowing whether or not this guy was a ballplayer.  But I do have one more reason, aside from the name and Atchison connection, for thinking he’s Oscar “Heavy” Johnson’s brother—which I’ll talk about in another entry, this one on Heavy himself, tomorrow.

P.S.  The title of this post came from the Hollies’ song; but, if you believe Wikipedia, the phrase itself may have originated as the title of an article published in Kiwanis Magazine in September, 1924—only a month before the Rollo Wilson column with the anecdote about Heavy’s brother.

*-Eh, what the heck—I’ll just call it “Half-Baked Research.”

did casey stengel discover bullet rogan?

Reproduced below, with David Skinner’s permission, are some excerpts from several email conversations I’ve had with him about Casey Stengel, J. L. Wilkinson, Bullet Rogan, and the 25th Infantry Wreckers.  I’ve drawn on David’s research in some of these posts, but thought readers deserved to see everything he had to say.  (The excerpts are from two different emails sent several months apart, and overlap a little in subject matter.)

I respectfully disagree [David writes] that there is ANY evidence that Casey scouted Rogan for Wilkinson.  In his ghosted Casey at the Bat, he remembers him as “Grogan” and recalls playing the army team in Douglas, New Mexico.  He heaps praise on “Grogan” and credits him with later playing for the Monarchs, but makes no claim to have recommended him to Wilkinson.  This isn't to say that Casey didn't talk to Wilkie.  Casey's faulty memory is partly responsible for the misstatements of Robert Creamer in Stengel: His Life and Times, which in turn are the source for the misstatements of later writers like John Holway and Janet Bruce.

It was Creamer who decided that “Grogan” was Rogan and that Douglas, New Mexico, was Douglas, Arizona.  He should have quit while he was ahead.  I believe Creamer was the first to wrongly locate the 25th at Fort Huachuca, since it was the closest army base at the time of his writing and he didn't know of Camp Little, etc.  He may also have invented the story of Stengel tipping Wilkie about the Wreckers players, or at least Rogan.  Casey may have known Bullet, could have seen him or played against him in earlier days in Kansas City.  But he didn't scout him or even see him play in Arizona.  The Nogales Daily Herald, which I went through to research my article on the Wreckers for the Arizona Baseball Journal, tells us that Rogan, although team captain, was unavailable for the Stengel series, and that he neither pitched nor played a position.

David

***

I do know that Stengel never saw Rogan pitch in Arizona, despite his assertion that he did (although he called him Grogan), but he surely knew him from earlier days in Kansas City.  I know little about the 24th Infantry and nothing of the cavalries.  There may have been a company at least of the 24th at Camp Newell in Naco (the border town near here), by the way, the only place in the mainland U.S. to have been bombed by a foreign power (by mistake by an American mercenary flying for Mexican revolutionaries in 1919).  The Bisbee Museum has a ripped photo of a baseball team from a company of the 24th, no other ID.  I know nothing, although I would very much like to know, about baseball or players (except a story in the Douglas Daily Dispatch of a 10th Cavalry game vs.  the white 1st Cavalry team from Camp Harry J. Jones in Douglas, the third of the World War I / Mexican Revolution-era border posts) at Ft. Huachuca (where I used to teach and my son played soccer), but I do know from the post historian that the 25th was not there until after the period in question.

What I mostly know about is the 25th at Camp Stephen D. Little in Nogales in 1919, which I researched for an article in the one-shot Arizona Baseball Journal a decade or so ago.  They in fact did not play a lot of outside baseball, although each company had a team and they played each other, the details of which games were not reported.  I went through the Nogales daily for the whole year, after finding nothing in Tucson or Phoenix papers (also nil in Bisbee and Douglas dailies), and there apparently was off-post track and football (Dobie Moore starred in both) but little reported baseball.  The Wreckers were bragged by the Daily Herald as the best team in the Army, but their games were little reported, maybe a mention of winning a home game vs.  a local team from Arizona or Sonora, but no game stories. 

Until the visit of Stengel’s “K.C. All-Stars.”  The games at the Morley Avenue  grounds (site of the present WPA-built job where the Arizona-Mexico League and other ‘30s and ‘50s teams played in OB as well as the 2003 indie league club I operated, which led the league when it folded) were heavily front page promoted, initially filled with misinformation about “Stengler,” a “pitcher for the White Sox,” but later with much info about the KC players, five (including Casey, who was between engagements at the time) with major league experience, the best remembered being the catcher, future batting champ Bubbles Hargrave.  The rest of the so-called major leaguers had only had cups of coffee, two with the 1914 Buffeds, but the five noted all checked out, after allowing for misspellings.  There was a top AAA pitcher on the team as well.

The games themselves were barely covered except to note a fast game in front of a big crowd, one runs-and-hits-only line score.  Moore hit a big home run to win one game, one result (the final game) was never reported, and nothing more about baseball after the morning of game 3.  Captain Rogan, as he was called (his baseball rather than army title; all commissioned officers were of course white), did not play.  Little else to be gleaned from the Herald, just a lineup for one game with a few last names of future Negro Leaguers: Ward, 3B, White, RF, Johnson (which one?) C, Fagen (sic) 2B, Herring 1B, Moore, SS, making them the only Negro Leaguers I could confirm playing vs. “K.C.”  It was previously reported that “Captain Rogan and his aggregation of hitters,” would not be there, with the two future Negro Leaguers among them being Goliath and Hawkins.  Other Negro League names of Wrecker players mentioned during the season include OF McNair and P Cooper.  Of course most of the above names are linked to the Monarchs, but you know of Herring (and a Johnson!) with the 1920 St. Louis Giants; Goliath, Ward, and White were with the 1920 Chicago Giants.  It seems more than the Monarchs benefited from the 25th, but Wilkie certainly got the cream.

David

David also pointed out that the 25th Infantry was not, in 1919-1920, stationed at Ft.  Huachuca:

The 25th moved from Hawaii to Camp Stephen D. Little, and would not move to Ft.  Huachuca for some time.  To quote my article in the Arizona Baseball Journal:

Part of the confusion comes from the fact that Ft. Huachuca was long the home of black regiments, and that the 25th actually was stationed there from 1932 to 1942, and elements of it were there from 1928 to 1931.  In 1919, however, the 10th Cavalry, at Huachuca from 1913 to 1931, was the only black regiment on post.

I footnote that from Cornelius Smith’s post history, but the dates were confirmed for me by the post historian, directly from army records.

David

I also wanted to add to David’s commentary the fact that by 1920 J. L. Wilkinson had already known Wilber Rogan for several years.  According to Phil Dixon, Rogan pitched briefly for Wilkinson’s All-Nations club during a furlough from the Army in 1917, including one game (a loss) against the St. Louis Giants (see his book The Monarchs 1920-1938, pages 24-25).

where’s wilber?

…Wilber “Bullet” Rogan, that is, Kansas City Monarchs Hall of Fame pitcher/outfielder.  His early career was spent mostly in the Army, playing at Hawaii’s Schofield Barracks for the 25th Infantry’s famous “Wreckers,” until the 25th was transferred to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, on the Mexican border, during the First World War.  When he got out of the Army in late June or early July 1920, J. L. Wilkinson of the Monarchs brought Rogan and his Army teammate Walter “Dobie” Moore back to the Midwest (Rogan grew up in Kansas City, and had briefly pitched for Wilkinson’s All-Nations Club while on furlough in 1917).

Dave Wyatt of the Chicago Defender tells the story of Rogan’s first appearance in Chicago (Defender, July 10, 1920):

“…Manager Wilkinson signed him early last spring; the boy made a three nights’ ride and jumped out with strange support, facing one of the best teams in the country and gave an exhibition of hurling that had 10,000 fans yelping and the American Giants standing on their heads.”

The game was on July 5; Rogan beat the American Giants 4-2 on one hit, striking out 11.  Wyatt doesn’t exactly say this was Rogan’s Negro National League debut, but he does strongly imply that he was fresh off a train from the far west (though the reference to an early spring signing is a little confusing; presumably Wilkinson signed him, then had to wait until he was free of his military obligations).

However, I’ve run across a couple of interesting things that tell us a little more about Rogan’s transition from the Army to the Negro Leagues.  First, there’s this box score, from the July 4, 1920, St. Louis Globe-Democrat:

This is in fact the first Negro National League game that Dobie Moore (“A. Moore”) and Bullet Rogan (called “Rugout” here) played for the Kansas City Monarchs, two days before the July 5 game in Chicago.

So Rogan and Moore actually started their NNL careers in St. Louis, not Chicago.  A small thing, perhaps.  But consider this: while working on a long-term project involving Negro League players in the 1920 census, I found Wilber Rogan.  But he wasn’t in Arizona, where the 25th Infantry (and several other black units) were still stationed at that time.  Instead, he was at the Army’s Jefferson Barracks—in St. Louis.  There’s really no doubt this is Bullet Rogan: he’s listed as having been born in Oklahoma, and his age is given as 30, matching Bullet’s accepted age for many years (though he was really, according to Phil Dixon, 26 at this time, having added four years to his age when he joined the Army back in 1911).  His census entry gives his rank as private, and his occupation as a “machinist helper.”  He is also one of only three black men on the whole post, as far as I could tell.

The census was taken in January—Rogan was counted on January 6, to be precise.  It’s possible he was temporarily assigned to Jefferson Barracks, then returned to Arizona, only to rush back to the Midwest in early summer to join the Monarchs.  But it’s certainly an interesting coincidence that in January he was assigned to the very same city where he would make his NNL debut in July.  Dobie Moore, by the way, was in Arizona in January; “Walter Moore” (24, born in Georgia) can be found in the census at Camp Stephen D. Little, Nogales, Arizona—on the same census page as Branch Russell and William Linder, other 25th Infantry veterans and eventual Monarchs.

Only mildly interesting so far, perhaps (though Rogan’s “three nights’ ride” from the west may not have occurred quite the way Wyatt seems to imply it did).  But there’s more to the story, which I’ll pick up tomorrow.

THANKS (11.1.06, 10:13 a.m.) to Phil Dixon for supplying the full name of Camp Stephen D. Little (the census records truncate it to “Camp Stephen”).