Agate Type

Santop's Scrap Books

The image above shows what I’ve called the “Santop montage,” a collection of black baseball photographs from the 1910s that was auctioned off by Hake’s a few years ago. Its exact origin was apparently unknown, but since it features several images of the famed deadball-era slugger Louis Santop, Hake’s speculated that the montage, “relief mounted and professionally framed,” “may have been done specifically for” Santop.

It also features many photos of Santop’s teammates over the years, including Leroy Grant, John Henry Lloyd, Ashby Dunbar, Bill Pettus, and others, making the connection to him even more solid.

Recently I was doing a little double-checking on Santop’s death date. A few sources, evidently following Riley’s Biographical Encyclopedia, still say he passed away on January 6, 1942; he actually died at 25 minutes past midnight on January 22, 1942, according to both his death certificate and contemporary press accounts, after a long illness.

In the course of doing this, I looked again at the Philadelphia Tribune’s fairly lavish coverage of his life, death, and funeral. As it turns out, the answer to the puzzle of the montage’s origins was staring us in the face the whole time. (In fact, I’m sure there are lots of people out there who already know, but it’s new to me.)

(Philadelphia Tribune, January 31, 1942, p. 13)

Jack Saunders, the Tribune’s sports editor, explained that Santop had three passions: baseball, politics, and…scrapbooking.

Given what we’re told here, odds are that the “Santop montage” was indeed Santop’s montage, put together by him (or at his direction) from his own personal collection. Moreover, there was a lot more besides this one page. By the time of his death he had amassed ten full scrap books of material, “over a thousand pictures,” according to Saunders. To be sure, not all of it was baseball; but surely Santop’s collection included more baseball photos than we’ve got in this montage. I wonder if it has survived, and if so, where it is now?

the santop montage

Hake’s has put up for auction a rather amazing piece from the Richard Merkin collection.  It’s astonishing, a one of a kind artifact: a montage of numerous photos of Negro league players from the 1910s, many of them images I’ve never seen before, including some fairly obscure players.  It’s dominated by pictures of Louis Santop (14 individual images in all, not counting the team photos). 

The montage’s history seems completely unknown; Hake’s speculates that it was perhaps made for Santop himself.  At the top and bottom are a number of team photos; the center is filled with photos of individual players, many from Palm Beach, Florida, winter baseball in the mid-1910s.  There are also a number of players in Indianapolis ABCs uniforms, which might also be from one of the team’s sojourns in Florida.

Here are some of the highlights (for me, anyway).

Lee Wade with mascot; Ashby Dunbar.

Bill Pettus.

The “Female Giants,” Florida 1913.  The players are wearing both Royal Poinciana and Brooklyn (Royal Giants?) jerseys.

Some of the Santop images.

1911 St. Louis Giants. 

It’s hard to tell, but I think  the two guys seated in the front might be Eugene Moore (on the left) and Joe Hewitt (on the right); Steel Arm Johnny Taylor might be seated in the middle, second from left; and Ben Taylor might be standing, second from left.

 

Leroy Grant, Louis Santop, Joe Hewitt, John Henry Lloyd; bottom left is catcher Burlin White; bottom center Bill Gatewood pitching.

I would love to see a large, high-resolution image of this montage printed on a fold-out sheet in a coffee-table book.  Come to think of it, I’d like to see a well-designed Negro league coffee table book, period.  There are a number of smaller books of photos, particularly the fine Black Baseball in… series, with volumes on Kansas City, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Detroit.  But possibly the only publication that really qualifies as a Negro league coffee-table book would be Phil Dixon’s The Negro Baseball Leagues: A Photographic History—and that is, I believe, out of print. There are hundreds—maybe thousands—of great images that are scattered around in other books, on the internet, and in collections.

UPDATE 5:04 p.m. I should also mention Smoke: The Romance and Lore of Cuban Baseball, by Mark Rucker and Peter Bjarkman, which is another of my favorite books of photographs.

three

Louis Santop (1924), Dan Kennard (1916)

It’s hard to say that a member of the Hall of Fame is overlooked; but it’s equally hard to say that Louis Santop has really gotten full credit for his abilities and accomplishments.  There are a couple of reasons for this: as a black slugger from the deadball era who played on the east coast, he hit the trifecta of obscurity, reduced offensive levels, and relatively low numbers of games counted in blackball stats.  Still, the numbers we do have so far are undeniably impressive: .342/.401/.488 in 393 games (half after the age of 30), a 163 OPS+.

One of his accomplishments that has escaped notice occurred at Atlantic City’s Inlet Park on July 6, 1911, when, as a rookie catcher for the Philadelphia Giants, Santop became the first player known to have hit three home runs in a “Negro league” game (that is, a game between top black professional teams).  At the time he often appeared in box scores under his real last name, “Loftin”; here are two box scores for the game:

(Philadelphia Inquirer, July 7, 1911, p. 10)

 

(Philadelphia Public Ledger, July 7, 1911, p. 4)

The second player to hit three home runs in a blackball game is truly overlooked: another catcher, a guy named Dan Kennard.  He basically has no reputation at all among Negro league historians.  He spent most of what were presumably his best years playing ball in the deep South, and didn’t make his way into big-time professional black baseball until he was 29.  The Seamheads DB has only 255 games for him, in which he hit .301/.368/.453—but, when adjusted, that actually adds up to an OPS+ of 142.  Also consider that nearly 2/3 of those games are from age 36 or later.

Kennard became the second player, after Santop, to hit three home runs in a blackball game, a feat he accomplished on May 4, 1913, in the uniform of the French Lick Plutos, at Northwestern Park in Indianapolis.

 

(Indianapolis Star, May 5, 1913, p. 8)

UPDATE 9:32 p.m. It’s also worth mentioning that Ed Wilson of the Cuban X Giants hit three home runs off future major leaguer Stoney McGlynn in 1902.