Agate Type

walter johnson vs. lincoln giants, 1911

Bill Staples has done some great work on the Walter Johnson vs. Lincoln Giants game at Olympic Field, Harlem, on October 15, 1911, concentrating on something that I wasn’t really paying any attention to: the fact that the first game of the A’s/Giants World Series was played in New York the day before, on Saturday, October 14.  Together with a little more research I did this morning, this gives us a fuller view of the context surrounding that game.

The Philadelphia Athletics had tuned up for the Series with three exhibition games against a team of American League All Stars organized by the Washington Nationals’ manager Jimmy McAleer.  The All Stars featured Walter Johnson, Gabby Street, and several other players from McAleer’s Washington squad, along with Ty Cobb and George Mullin from the Tigers, Hal Chase from the New York Highlanders, and a trio of Red Sox—Smokey Joe Wood, Larry Gardner, and Ray Collins.

In Washington on October 10, Jack Coombs, Eddie Plank, and Chief Bender of the Athletics combined to beat Walter Johnson, 3 to 2.  The next day, in Richmond, Virginia, the All Stars turned the tables in a 13 to 8 slugfest, and on October 12 back in Philadelphia, the A’s, using three second-string pitchers, edged Smokey Joe Wood and the All Stars 3 to 2.

On the evidence of this exhibition series, McAleer declared the A’s favorites over the Giants in the upcoming World Series:

(“Athletics His Choice,” Washington Post, October 13, 1911, p. 8)

On Friday, October 13, McAleer’s All Stars went to Baltimore to face the Eastern League’s Orioles.  Again Walter Johnson pitched, striking out 11 and walking none, to win 7 to 1.  The Orioles’ ace Rube Vickers (32-14 in the Eastern League that year) had been loaned to the New York Giants to pitch on the final day of the regular season against the Brooklyn Dodgers on October 12, but Orioles’ owner Jack Dunn recalled him to work in the exhibition game, no doubt counting on the marquee matchup to swell attendance.

The next day, Johnson, Street, and McAleer were all in New York for the start of the World Series, among a long list of luminaries (both baseball-related and not).  Then on Sunday, Johnson and Street played for the “All-Leaguers” against the Lincoln Giants.  This means, by the way, that after the regular season’s conclusion Walter Johnson pitched three complete games in six days.

Bill sent a couple of additional reports about the All-Leaguers-Lincoln Giants game.  The New York Times account calls the “All-Leaguers” the “All Stars”:

(New York Times, October 16, 1911)

And the Washington Times reports that in the third inning Walter Johnson smacked a foul ball that hit his teammate Bliss sitting on the bench, breaking his nose and sending him to Harlem Hospital.

(Washington Times, October 16, 1911, p. 10)

Bill suggests that the All-Leaguers were not a local white semipro team, but rather a team of major and minor leaguers, many of them perhaps in town for the World Series.  The outfielder Mack, for example, could be Connie Mack’s son Earle, who played briefly for Scranton that year; the unfortunate Bliss could be Cardinals catcher Jack Bliss.

Here are the rest of Bill’s comments:

“Johnson is teammates with white players, not black players, so technically he is not a Negro Leaguer. Most likely the “playing WITH Negro Leaguers story” was misremembered by Johnson, or was a misinterpretation by Povich in 1939. I wonder if Johnson is blending memories of two different games: 1) A game where Gabby Street, “the southerner,” played in the 1911 game vs. Lincoln Giants;  and 2) Another game vs. Negro Leaguers where Home Run Johnson hit a HR off of him.

“Also, given that Ty Cobb played for Walter Johnson's All Stars just a few days before, and the fact that some stars are in NY for Game 1 of the WS, I don’t think it is out of the realm of possibility that “Wagner, ss” is in fact “The White Pop Lloyd,” Honus Wagner. If so, this game puts Lloyd and Wagner on the same field of competition. I don't know much about either player, but have read that the two respected each other as players ... and I had never heard of the two of them competing head to head. So if this is Honus, the box score you found is significant.”

Incidentally, it was John Holway (in his Complete Book of Baseball’s Negro Leagues—I don’t have a page reference handy) who suggested that the shortstop Wagner in this game was Honus Wagner.  I was initially skeptical because 1) nothing I’ve seen (yet) mentions Honus; 2) there were other infielders named Wagner around at the time (most notably Heinie Wagner of the Red Sox, but also a couple of minor leaguers); and 3) Honus had been hobbled by a serious injury in early September (much cited at the time as one of the main reasons the Pirates lost the pennant)—but he had returned to the Pirates’ lineup by mid-September, so this doesn’t rule him out.  If anybody knows for sure, drop me a line.

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.

which taylor brother is it?

Over at Seamheads.com last month I posted the following photo, which I identified as Ben Taylor:

You may have noticed that this player has been identified as Ben’s older brother Steel Arm Johnny Taylor in more than one source.  In fact, I originally used this very picture to illustrate John Taylor in the Negro Leagues DB.

It comes from this team photo of the 1912 New York Lincoln Giants:

This photo has been published several times, notably in Phil Dixon’s The Negro Baseball Leagues: A Photographic History (1992) and Dick Clark and Larry Lester’s The Negro Leagues Book (1994).  In both books the player is identified as Steel Arm Taylor, probably for a couple of reasons:

1) He has been labeled “Taylor P.”  John Taylor is the only one of the Taylor brothers now remembered as primarily a pitcher, so it makes sense this would be him.

2) There’s a report in the June 27, 1912, New York Age that the Lincolns  had signed “Steel Arm Taylor” of the previous year’s St. Louis Giants, and that he then pitched the Lincolns to a victory over the Pittsburgh Giants on June 23.

However, I’ve become quite certain that the Lincoln Giants’ “Taylor P” is really Ben.  Here's why:

1) It simply looks more like Ben Taylor, at least to me.  Here are a few photos of Ben from various sources:

Meanwhile here are a couple of solidly ID’d photos of Johnny Taylor:

2) His height is wrong for Johnny Taylor.  In the Lincoln Giants photo, he’s obviously taller than Spottswood Poles, who’s standing next to him, and comparable in height to Judy Gans.  On their World War II draft cards Poles is listed (generously, I’d say) at 5’9” and Gans is 5’11”.  John Boyce Taylor, meanwhile, is 5’5 ½”.  I don’t have a draft card for Ben, but a photo of the four Taylor brothers standing together printed in the Indianapolis Freeman in 1910 shows that John was clearly several inches shorter than Ben (and C. I.), and about the same height as Candy Jim Taylor (whose draft card has him at 5’5”). 

L to R: James Allen Taylor, John Boyce Taylor, Charles Isham Taylor, Benjamin Harrison Taylor

(Indianapolis Freeman, April 16, 1910)

In the following photo of the 1914 Indianapolis A.B.C.s, Steel Arm Johnny is standing on the far left, next to Dicta Johnson, who was 5’7” according to his draft card.  Ben, meanwhile, is standing next to Edgar Burch, who was 5’10”.

In this photo of the 1909 St. Paul Gophers (from Todd Peterson's great book Early Black Baseball in Minnesota, but originally published in the same issue of the Freeman as the Taylor brothers photo, in fact on the same page), Steel Arm Johnny is standing on the far left.



Also look back at the photo of the 1910 Chicago Giants I posted the other day--John Taylor is standing, third from left, clearly shorter than Walter Ball and Harry Moore and about the same height as Bobby Winston (5’6”).

3) It’s now largely forgotten that Ben was primarily known as a pitcher in 1912.  It probably wasn’t until he joined the A.B.C.s in 1914 that he definitively became known as a first baseman above all.

4) John Taylor was pitching for the West Baden Sprudels from late June to late August, the same time I have “Taylor” documented in Lincoln Giants box scores.  There’s no doubt about the identity of the Sprudels’ pitcher—he’s referred to several times as “Steel Arm,” or “J. B. Taylor,” or “Johnny Taylor.”  The New York Age claimed that “Steel Arm Taylor” pitched for the Lincoln Giants on June 23, 1912, but “J. B. Taylor” was the winning pitcher for the Sprudels in Indiana on June 30.  I suspect the Age simply mistook Ben for Steel Arm, or wrongly applied the nickname to Ben (both had pitched for St. Louis in 1911).

the death (and life) of charles “chino” smith

Charles Smith, now usually known as “Chino” (his nickname in Cuba), but called simply “Charlie Smith” in the newspapers of the late 1920s, died in New York City in the early hours of the morning on January 15, 1932.  Aged only 31 at his death, “Smitty” was eulogized by the Homestead Grays’ Cumberland Posey as “one of the best hitters of all time” (Pittsburgh Courier, January 23, 1932).  The New York Amsterdam News called him one of baseball’s “most outstanding characters and an all-time hitter whose ability drew many fans to the games in which he appeared” (January 27, 1932).  He was a pugnacious, crowd-baiting hitter of ferocious line drives who terrified pitchers. Satchel Paige deemed him one of the two toughest outs he ever faced (the other being Jud Wilson).

Smith’s statistics in the 1929 American Negro League were unworldly:

Smith led the ANL with a .464 average, 214 total bases, and a .903 slugging percentage (Rap Dixon was a distant second in the last two categories with 189 and .784).  Of course, this was in a league that batted .317 with a .448 slugging percentage, and it was in the Bronx’s Catholic Protectory Oval, a park that was only 180 feet down the lines on both sides.  Still, Smith comfortably outhit his Lincoln Giants’ teammate John Beckwith (.443, .776), and nobody else on the Lincolns, a team that challenged for the pennant (and by some accounts actually had the best overall record in the league), was even remotely close to Smith’s numbers.  It was not a bad year for Mr. Charles Smith.

According to John Holway in Blackball Stars, Bill Holland thought that Smith might have died of yellow fever.  Holway also notes that Smith’s death could have been linked to an on-field collision with Walter Cannady during a Lincolns-Homestead Grays game at Yankee Stadium on September 28, 1930, when Cannady accidentally kneed Smith in the stomach, and Smith had to be carried off, as shown in this photo from the New York Amsterdam News (October 1, 1930).   Incidentally, the day before (Saturday, September 27) Josh Gibson reputedly hit the only home run ever to leave Yankee Stadium (though the story has probably been greatly exaggerated).


Even in this poor reproduction, Oscar Charleston of the Grays is recognizable behind Smith.  Various accounts have it that Smith was knocked unconscious, which of course sounds more like a blow to the head than to the stomach.

Although he never played for the Lincoln Giants again, Smith had recovered sufficiently by November to appear in the special “Unico” championship in Cuba.  The following spring he joined the Brooklyn Royal Giants and spent the whole season with them, though he did miss quite a few games.

His death came on January 15, 1932.  Here’s his death certificate (which I originally published in the Outsider Baseball Bulletin, July 21, 2010):

Chino Smith died, not of yellow fever, but of stomach and pancreatic cancer, made worse by exhaustion.  John Holway’s report about Cannady kneeing Smith in the stomach might be the product of vague memories about Smith having stomach trouble in the months before his death, conflated with the dramatic incident at Yankee Stadium in 1930 that marked the end of his Lincoln Giants career.

Charlie Smith’s body was shipped to Darlington, South Carolina, where his family had lived at least since the 1910 census was taken.

Which raises the question of his birth place and date.  The death certificate (January, 1932) has him aged 31; in the 1930 census “Charles Smith,” “Ball Player,” born in South Carolina and living in Harlem with his wife Bessie, is listed as aged 29.  In the 1910 census young Charles E. Smith, living with his parents Thomas and Leila and several siblings in Society Hill, Darlington County, South Carolina, is listed as aged 9.  (Incidentally, Smith’s mother, according to his death certificate, was “Lelia Anthrum”; the Smith family in Society Hill in 1910 lived next door to a family named Antrum.)

In the winter of 1925/26 a number of Negro league players from New York City traveled to Puerto Rico, presumably to play ball.  I have not yet found any kind of public record of a Negro league tour of the island or of North American players being hired by teams that winter, but various players can be found on passenger lists returning from San Juan to New York from January through April, 1926.  These included Chino Smith’s Brooklyn Royal Giants’ teammates Dick Redding, Connie Rector, Charles Spearman, and Bob Scott, along with George Scales, Merven Ryan, Tom Finley, Richard Gee, Judy Gans, and Bardell (or Budell) Young of the Lincoln Giants. 

When George Scales returned to the U.S. from Puerto Rico aboard the S.S. Caracas on March 8, 1926, he was accompanied by one Charles Smith, on a passenger list that otherwise consisted entirely of Hispanic names:



This Charles Smith had a Harlem address (4 W. 129th St.), and was listed as born in “Hamet,” North Carolina, on September 24, 1901.  There is no “Hamet” in either of the Carolinas, but there is a Hamlet, North Carolina, which is located in Richmond County, right on the border with South Carolina—about 30 miles away from Society Hill, South Carolina.

Coincidentally, Hamlet was also the hometown of John Coltrane, who was born there on September 23, 1926.  Coltrane’s playing, like Smith’s, has been described as aggressive, even angry; did they also share a hometown and (nearly) a birthday?

  

catholic protectory oval

One of the most remarkable settings for Negro league baseball was the Catholic Protectory Oval in the Bronx, home of the New York Lincoln Giants in the 1920s.  The Lincolns’ original home, Olympic Field in Harlem, had been built by the club’s founders, Roderick James “Jess” McMahon and his brother Edward*, for their white semipro club, the Olympic A.C., back in 1905.  The McMahons lost control of both Olympic Field and the Lincoln Giants in 1915, founding a new black club, the Lincoln Stars, which played at Lenox Oval for a couple of seasons.  The Lincoln Giants, under the ownership of James J. Keenan and Charles Harvey, continued at Olympic until 1920.

(*-Jess McMahon was eventually best known as a boxing and wrestling promoter, an associate of Tex Rickard and Carlos Henriquez.  You’ve heard of his grandson.)

At the start of the 1920 season Olympic Field was torn down, and its bleachers were transferred to the ball field at the Catholic Protectory, a famous orphanage in the Bronx.  Sunday semipro and amateur games had been played there for a couple of decades, but the coming of the famous African-American team would bring much larger crowds.

Here’s an illustration of the Catholic Protectory from sometime before 1920, with the Oval situated in the center left.  The outfield bleachers had not been installed yet.  (From Lawrence Ritter’s East Side, West Side: Tales of New York Sporting Life, 1910-1960.)

Here’s a diagram from a Sanborn fire insurance map, showing the Oval in 1929, the year the Lincolns joined the American Negro League, the short-lived successor to the Eastern Colored League:

And here, courtesy of Kevin Johnson (who has written a couple of posts on the 1928 Negro leagues), is a fantastic aerial photo of the Catholic Protectory Oval in 1924, the Lincolns’ second season in the ECL:

The scorekeeper’s table was placed under the trees visible here along the right field line.

Aside from the neo-Gothic architecture surrounding it, the other unusual feature of the Oval was its cramped shape.  Kevin asked the ballpark expert Ron Selter, author of Ballparks of the Deadball Era, to estimate the dimensions.  This is what he came up with:

LF 180
SLF 238
LC 358 (deepest point in park)
CF 292 (the HP-CF axis hit the CF end of the RF-CF bleachers)
RC 286
SRF 256
RF 180

Ron remarked (to Kevin) that it reminded him of “a miniature version of the playing field at the Polo Grounds.”

The data I’ve gathered definitely suggests that the Catholic Protectory Oval increased offense by huge amounts.  Any hitter with the Lincoln Giants in the 1920s—I’m looking at you, Chino Smith—probably saw his stats greatly inflated by the park, in the midst of what was already a very high-scoring era.

The Lincoln Giants’ successors in the 1930s, most notably the New York Black Yankees, moved to other venues; and in 1938 the Catholic Protectory was razed to make way for the Parkchester Apartments.

UPDATE 3/1/2011 Corrected dates on the map & aerial photo.