Agate Type

Cristóbal Torriente: A New Mystery

From the Outsider Baseball Bulletin, Vol. 1, No. 9 (August 4, 2010):

This is the death certificate for Cristóbal Torriente, showing that he passed away of pulmonary tuberculosis at Riverside Hospital in the Bronx on April 11, 1938, having been hospitalized since July of the previous year. It probably tells you something about his last years that he was still listed as a “Baseball player,” despite not having worked at that profession since August, 1933. According to the reverse side, Ramiro Ramírez, another Cuban ballplayer, took charge of his body, claiming to be Torriente’s cousin. It was Ramírez who employed one A. R. Hernández as undertaker.

According to John Holway’s Blackball Stars, Rogelio Crespo said that “they draped a Cuban flag over his coffin, and a politician arranged to return the body to Havana” (p. 132). Torriente is reported to be buried in the Cementerio de Cristóbal Colón, where two monuments memorialize members of the Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame. His death certificate, however, shows that he was supposed to have been buried at Calvary Cemetery (in Queens; “City Cemetery” is crossed out) on April 15. Presumably Torriente’s body was returned to Cuba instead, or else his remains were moved back to Cuba at some later time. But it might be worth checking out the Calvary Cemetery records to see if in fact Torriente never left the United States.

[Scott Simkus added this editor’s note in the original:] Ramiro Ramírez and Rogelio Crespo were both members of Syd Pollock’s 1933 Cuban Stars, featured in this week’s cover story. During the 1933 season, Torriente was in Chicago, managing a team called Falcon’s Giants, who played around the Chicago metropolitan area during the spring.

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I originally published the above piece in the Outsider Baseball Bulletin on August 4, 2010. Today Ralph Carhart at the Hall Ball blog offers a much more complete look at Torriente’s final days. He points out that Riverside Hospital, located on the now-deserted and off-limits North Brother Island in the East River,  also housed Typhoid Mary during the same time Torriente was there (she died in November 1938, seven months after Torriente).

Ralph did what I only suggested in my OBB article, actually contacting the two cemeteries in question, and finding out that neither burial ground has any record of Torriente’s interment. Given that Calvery Cemetery has interred some 3 million people since its founding in 1848, and the Colón Cemetery about 1 million since 1876, it’s certainly possible that over the years a few records have been misplaced. Nevertheless, there’s a mystery here that I barely suspected back in 2010.

the death of dick redding

Ryan Whirty has been looking into the deaths of Dick Redding and Sol White, both of whom passed away in mental hospitals on Long Island, within a few years of each other. For some time researchers of Dick Redding have been stymied by the New York State Department of Health’s practice of redacting the cause of death from death certificates. A few months ago I requested a copy of Redding’s death certificate, just to see what would happen. The other day I finally received it. To my surprise, nothing was redacted—the cause of death was there to see, though some details were illegible.

I sent it to Ryan, who wrote it up.

antonio susini

During the 1921/22 Cuban winter season, the Cuban League could only field two teams, and when Almendares totally dominated, winning 4 out of the first 5 games played, fan interest plummeted. The league called it quits even before the New Year. Deprived of their expected income, most of the players were hired by the Central and Cuba clubs of Santiago de Cuba, on the eastern end of the island. The two teams promptly arranged their own lengthy series, the Campeonato de Oriente, or Championship of Oriente province.

On January 30, 1922, in the eighth inning of one of the games, a controversy erupted over a close play at home. Players from both teams argued with the umpires and with each other.  It went on and on. The crowd grew restless, and the argument more heated. José Leblanc, a pitcher for Cuba playing right field in this game, squared off against Antonio Susini, Central’s shortstop. They exchanged harsh words. Suddenly Susini lost it. With the bat he held in his hands, he struck a brutal blow to Leblanc’s head and knocked him senseless to the ground.

The crowd poured onto the field, and only the intervention of the police already on hand kept more violence from breaking out. Leblanc was taken to a nearby hospital where doctors drilled holes in his skull to relieve the pressure from swelling. In the meantime, the police handcuffed Susini and took him away.

Leblanc had suffered a serious fracture in his left frontal parietal region. That night doctors operated on him, extracting several pieces of bone from his brain with tweezers. He never regained consciousness, and died the following afternoon.*

News of the event spread through Cuba and beyond. A brief Associated Press item was reprinted in many U.S. newspapers, such as the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

(Richmond Times-Dispatch, January 31, 1922)

Susini was charged with murder. According to secondary sources, he was convicted, and sentenced to a term that I’ve seen described as either 13 years in prison, or 10 to 15 years. And, until now, that’s pretty much where he exited baseball history. He killed another player on a baseball field. Surely nobody would want him back in the game.

As it turns out, despite much deserved condemnation for his horrific act, there was a lot of sympathy for Susini. By 1924 a group of fans had banded together to ask for a presidential pardon for Susini. I haven’t been able to find much more on that effort, or whether it was successful or not. I tend to think, though, that Susini served out his full sentence—because he next enters the historical record 14 years after he murdered Leblanc. Amazingly, it appears that he did indeed return to play professional baseball again.

Prior to the Leblanc incident, Antonio Susini had played in the United States once, in 1921 with Abel Linares’s All Cubans. Along with the other All Cubans players, Susini appears on a passenger list aboard the steam packet Governor Cobb, which departed Havana for New York on April 21, 1921:

Susini is listed here as 19, which is crossed out and replaced with 20.

Fast-forward 15 years. Here’s a passenger list showing players for the eastern Cuban Stars (a different team from Pompez’s New York Cubans, by the way), traveling from Havana to New York aboard the SS Florida on May 14, 1936. On line 11 is one Antonio Susini, now aged 35:

 

Here’s the continuation of Susini’s entry from the second page of the passenger list, which shows his sister “H. Susini” as his contact, and says he was last in the United States in New York in 1921.

Here’s a box score showing “Suseni” appearing as a pinch-hitter for the Cuban Stars against the Black Yankees at Dexter Park on May 30, 1936:

(Long Island Daily Press, May 31, 1936, p. 17)

Moreover: in 1937 and 1938 a first baseman named Antonio Susini hit .297 and slugged .411 in 50 games for the Santa Rosa club of the Mexican League.

It would appear that, after serving a prison sentence for murdering a fellow player on the field, Antonio Susini was able to come back and play professional baseball for a few years in his mid- to late thirties.

From this distance, it’s impossible to say why. That the crime was certainly not premeditated, and was probably the result of a moment of madness, likely played a role. Susini, though not yet an established star, might have been popular with fans and/or players.

For what it’s worth, José María Fernández, the veteran catcher and player-manager, the man who (as I pointed out in my last post) said in 1927 that witnessing Susini’s murder of Leblanc was the “greatest displeasure” in his baseball career, was Susini’s teammate on the 1936 Cuban Stars (as he had been on the 1922 Central club, as well as the 1921 All Cubans). He witnessed Susini’s crime, and yet he was able to play on the same team with him again, albeit 15 years later.

There’s a single photo out there that purports to show Antonio Susini (I don’t know the original source.)

Though some doubt has been cast on this player’s identity as Susini, that doubt is rooted in the fact that this photo shows a Cuban Stars uniform from the late 1920s or 1930s, whereas Susini was only known to have appeared in the U.S. in 1921, and then for the All Cubans.

In fact, Susini played for the 1936 Cuban Stars. And the uniform shown above is identical to the one shown in this photograph of none other than José María Fernández.

* - My account of Leblanc’s murder is drawn from two January 31, 1922, articles from the Santiago newspapers El Cubano Libre and La Independencia, reprinted in El Mundo, February 3, 1922, and from a January 31 article in Diario de la Marina.

UPDATE 7:08 pm I should add that according to newspaper accounts of his death, Leblanc’s full name was José Leblanc Vargas, he was born in Cienfuegos, and he was 28 years old. These details do not match anybody I have found in passenger lists yet.

UPDATE 9/9/2014 According to this article, the longtime Cuban player Cheo Ramos, a teammate of Susini on the 1921 All Cubans, claimed that Susini was a rumba dancer (of the fast-paced “Columbia” style) and an “Ekobio Abakuá” or “Ñañigo,” a member of the Abakuá secret society, an Afro-Cuban fraternal organization.

Also, Mark Aubrey tracked down an exchange between a couple of old Cuban baseball fans in the Spanish edition of the Miami Herald in 1982, in which one of them remembers that Susini served his sentence on the Isla de Pinos (the Isle of Pines; now called the Isla de Juventud). There he played prison baseball, and occasionally took the field against teams that visited from Havana—which might account for how Antonio Susini remained in the consciousness of the Cuban baseball community.

lum croxton of the cuban giants

A huge amount of information has been dug up in recent years about previously very obscure players, but much of it has generally gone unnoticed or unreported except in emails between researchers. I’m going to try to bring a lot of this research out into the light of day. Let’s start with Columbus “Lum” Croxton, a pitcher for the New York Cuban Giants in 1908 and 1909. He appears in the roster at the end of Robert W. Peterson’s Only the Ball Was White and in Riley’s Biographical Encyclopedia merely as “Croxton,” with no other information about him. We can now fill in quite a bit about his life and career, even if we don’t know everything.

He first appears in the 1900 census in Hill Township, Little Rock, Arkansas, a district that would later become part of the town of Argenta (now North Little Rock). According to this entry, he was born in February of 1885 in Mississippi, and by the age of 15 was already working as a day laborer while still living with his parents.

It’s not known when Columbus Croxton started to play ball. We next find him already in the big time (relatively speaking), as a pitcher for the Cuban Giants of the 1908 National Association of Colored Baseball Clubs. As far as games against top black professionals went, he was as close to an ace as the team got, going 2-5 with a 2.64 ERA, leading the team in games and innings pitched.  The highlight of his National Association season was perhaps a 2 to 1 win over the Philadelphia Giants in Atlantic City, with Croxton holding John Henry Lloyd and company to seven scattered hits.

(Philadelphia Inquirer, September 16, 1908, p. 11)

Croxton was still with the Cubans in 1909 when they were beginning to be marginalized by Nat Strong; but they were kicked out of the league entirely in 1910, and Croxton went home to Argenta. While there he had to deal with something most big leaguers don’t have to worry about now during the off season:

(Indianapolis Freeman, February 26, 1910, p. 7)

 Croxton recovered, and in the spring joined several of his Cuban Giants teammates on the Bluff City Tigers of Memphis, Tennessee. In this article his name was garbled in a pretty unfortunate way:

(Indianapolis Freeman, March 5, 1910, p. 7)

 

(Indianapolis Freeman, May 14, 1910, p. 7)

 That spring Croxton appears in the 1910 U.S. census living in Argenta at the same address as in 1900 (208 South Cypress Street), with his now-widowed mother (whose name is given here as Mary Croxton instead of Francis). His occupation is listed as “Ball Player.” His age here is given as 20, making born five years later than the 1900 census entry.

After a year with the Memphis Tigers, he moved back home to captain a “howling aggregation” known as the Argenta Grays. Another player on the Grays was Wabishaw “Bill” Wiley, a student at Arkansas Baptist College and future dentist and New York Lincoln Giants star.

(Indianapolis Freeman, April 15, 1911, p. 7)

 The following season Croxton would have “a first-class club of his own,” staffed by  “a bunch of stars of the South.”

 

(Indianapolis Freeman, December 16, 1911, p. 7)

 

(Indianapolis Freeman, April 13, 1912, p. 6)

 The name of Croxton’s 1912 club remains unknown for now, but it might have been the Little Rock Quapaws, the team he led in 1913. (John “Pop” Ransom was manager of Croxton’s old team, the Memphis Tigers.)

 

(Indianapolis Freeman, April 12, 1913, p. 7)

 It’s not clear when (indeed, if) he quit baseball. In 1915 he was still living with his mother in the same house, but by 1916 he had established himself as the proprietor of a pool hall, a fairly common line of work for current and former ball players. (He was still living with his mother.)

(Little Rock City Directory, 1916)

 He grew “prosperous” in his new business, although like many other operators of such establishments, he walked a fine line with respect to the law. In early 1916 Croxton was arrested and charged for bootlegging.

But he never had a chance to answer these charges. Shortly before 8 o’clock in the evening on April 22, 1916, Croxton left a friend’s house on Arkansas Avenue to walk home. Ten minutes later another friend, leaving the same house, happened upon Croxton sitting under a bridge, in some distress. She left for help, but when she returned he was dead.  Here let the Arkansas Gazette tell a more detailed version of the story:

(Arkansas Gazette, April 23, 1916)

(Arkansas Gazette, April 24, 1916)

The coroner’s jury would eventually give the definitive word on Croxton’s death:

(Arkansas Gazette, April 25, 1916)

The Arkansas Gazette pieces were dug up by Caleb Hardwick, who does amazing work at the Arkansas Baseball Encyclopedia (especially check out his Negro league pages).

Anyway—the point I have about Lum Croxton, if I need to have one, is not that his was an exceptional or especially dramatic life, apart from the circumstances surrounding his death (if not his death itself). It’s that even a relatively obscure, poorly documented member of a second-tier team in the early twentieth century, somebody who existed for decades as just a last name in most lists of Negro league players, can eventually have his story hold. Hundreds of others like him are only know emerging into the light from many years of neglect.

the baseball funster

Courtesy of Bill Mullins, here’s some more about the “Baseball Funster,” Elias Bryant, a.k.a. “Circus Country Brown,” or just “Country Brown.”

First: it turns out that Bryant was also a basketball clown:

(Rome, New York, Daily Sentinel, December 6, 1935, p. 2)

How much of this he did I don’t know—just about everything else I’ve seen is just about his baseball career.

Next, a great action shot of Bryant’s on-field comedy act:

(Syracuse Journal, July 20, 1933, p. 21)

That’s Chappie Johnson (manager of the opposing team) standing, Bryant sprawled on the ground, and a random kid from the crowd throwing water on Bryant. In case the caption doesn’t enlarge enough to read, here’s what it says:

“Circus Country Brown, the comedian with the Brooklyn Royal Giants, claimants of the world’s champion negro baseball team, gave the spectators at the game between the Giants and Chappie Johnson’s Negro All-Stars plenty of laughs yesterday at Long Branch [Park].

“Brown shot craps, pretended shaving himself with a two-foot razor, gave a talk on the telephone and also did a boxing act all by himself in which he delivered a knockout blow on his chin which made him fall in a heap on the ground. All this occurred on the first base line.

“In the picture is shown a young boy throwing a glass of water on Brown as he is on the ground. This was not part of the act, but some of the Chappies who knew that Brown was going to fall flat on his back gave the youngster a cup of water and told him to throw it on Brown. The comedian took it good-naturedly and made it appear as if he did not mind it. Brown’s antics pleased the crowd immensely.”

A few years later, Bryant took another fall, but this time he didn’t get up. I probably shouldn’t have referred so glibly to his “murder” the other day. The New York Age put a more detailed account of his death on its front page:

(New York Age, January 1, 1938, p. 1)

If there is any truth in this, it does seem that the death was more accidental than not. It appears likely that Terrell may not have spent much (if any) time in jail; just four months later he was married (to one Estelle Taylor):

(New York Age, April 16, 1938, p. 5)

This couple can be seen in the 1940 census, living on West 134th Street in Harlem (with six-month-old twins, a boy and a girl).  The fact that Terrell was married so soon after the incident in which Bryant died confirms that Terrill was the brother of Bryant’s wife (rather than being married to a sister of Bryant), meaning that Edna Bryant’s maiden name was Terrell.

In the same census, on West 130th Street , resides Edna Bryant, “Negro,” widowed, 41, born in Georgia. Unfortunately her occupation isn’t given, though she was evidently accepting lodgers.

Edna may have been Bryant’s second wife. In a Georgia Deaths database I was able to find a record for an African American woman named Stately Bryant, whose husband was named Elias Bryant. Stately passed away on January 12, 1921, in Atlanta, Georgia—where Bryant the ballplayer had recently been attending Morris Brown College.

the latest on dobie moore

Here’s the latest on the search for Walter “Dobie” Moore, the great Kansas City Monarchs and Santa Clara Leopardos shortstop. In case you haven’t been keeping track, see this and this.

To sum up: Dobie Moore, born in Atlanta sometime around 1896 or 1897, was known to be living in Detroit in the 1930s, along with a brother named Pete Moore who was also a ballplayer. On September 11, 1943, the Chicago Defender printed a photo of him, identifying him as a resident of Detroit. Less than a year and a half earlier, in April 1942, an African American man named Walter Moore, born February 8, 1896, in Atlanta, Georgia, registered for the draft in Detroit.

This particular Walter Moore and his family can be identified in both the 1930 and 1940 census in Detroit. His younger brother Allen is listed as a professional ballplayer in the 1930 census. And this Walter Moore, as Peter Morris discovered, died of a heart attack at his home in Detroit on August 20, 1947.

Everything seems to fit: he was born in Atlanta, lived in Detroit at the right time, his younger brother was a ballplayer (even though the names differ—were Pete Moore and Allen Moore the same person?). According to his death certificate, Walter Moore moved to Detroit in 1926—the very year Dobie Moore was shot and his Negro league career ended.

The only problem is…Dobie Moore was reported to have been a pallbearer at his old teammate George Carr’s funeral in Los Angeles in January, 1948. Six months later, in June 1948, he was reported to have been robbed by “three thugs” on a Chicago street. So the last two sightings of Dobie Moore alive took place after Walter Moore of Detroit died on August 20, 1947.

As I wrote last year:

These 1948 sightings of Dobie Moore could be mistakes.  And the circumstantial evidence linking this Walter Moore to the Monarch shortstop is pretty convincing.  But it would be great to get one solid link between this Walter and the ballplayer—something like a reference to Dobie’s younger brother Allen (rather than Pete), or anything giving the name of any of Dobie’s relatives, or a record or document that establishes Walter Moore of Detroit as a ballplayer himself.

To cut the suspense short: I think I’ve found a record that establishes a link between Dobie Moore the ballplayer and Walter Moore of Detroit. In the 1923/24 winter season, Dobie Moore starred for the greatest team in Cuban history, the Leopardos of Santa Clara. I’ve finally found a passenger list showing several of Santa Clara’s American players returning to the U.S., arriving at Key West aboard the steam packet Governor Cobb on March 17, 1924. (Click to enlarge.)

There’s no doubt this is Dobie Moore, as he is accompanied by several of his teammates: Dave Brown, Oliver Marcell, Frank Duncan, and Frank Warfield (Elvis Holland, a.k.a. Bill Holland, was originally scheduled to travel with them but didn’t make it aboard for whatever reason).

Moore is listed as born in Atlanta, Georgia, on February 6, 1897. This is very close, but not identical to, the February 8, 1895 or 1896 that records list for Walter Moore of Detroit. It’s worth noting that the other Negro league players on this passenger list are given birth dates that differ from other (generally quite reliable) records. From what I’ve seen, the passenger lists of this era are prone to errors and misreadings borne out of carelessness or haste, so such differences are not entirely surprising. So you can compare, here is the birth information for the other players from this list, compared with the birth information from other sources that I’ve used in the Seamheads DB:

• Dave Brown – February 5, 1896, Dallas Tex. / June 9, 1895, Leon County, Texas
• Oliver Marcell – January 14, 1896, New Orleans, La. / June 21, 1895, Thibodaux, La.
• Elvis Holland – February 28, 1901, Alexandria, Ind. / February 28, 1901, Indianapolis, Ind.
• Frank Duncan – February 9, 1901, Kansas City, Mo. / February 14, 1901, Kansas City, Mo.
• Frank Warfield – April 15, 1899, Indianapolis, Ind. / April 28, 1899, Indianapolis, Ind.

With the exception of the always slippery Dave Brown, the birth dates are at least similar (in Marcell’s case June, or Jun., could easily be mistaken for Jan.). Alexandria is a small township less than 50 miles from Indianapolis, while Thibodaux is about 60 miles from New Orleans. It’s very common to find people giving their birth place as a larger town or city near their actual birth place, especially later in life. And it’s equally common to see specific dates move around a little from record to record.

What I’m saying is that I think the birth information on this passenger list is, if not absolutely correct in every detail, approximately accurate—and that I think we can take the February 6, 1897, birth in Atlanta for Dobie Moore as a definite link to Walter Moore of Detroit, born on February 8, 1895 or 1896, in Atlanta. The “circumstantial” case (as I’ve called it) that Peter has found Dobie Moore’s death date is getting very strong, in my opinion.

If we’ve found Dobie Moore, by the way, that would mean he’s buried in Detroit Memorial Park East, in Macomb County, Michigan.

Here’s a list of links tracing the search for Dobie Moore beginning in 2007:

• Why all published birth and death information for Dobie Moore is wrong (October 20, 2007)
• Walter Moore’s WW2 draft card found (October 23, 2007)
• Image of Walter Moore’s WW2 draft card (February 8, 2013)
• Walter Moore’s death record found (April 30, 2013)
• Dobie Moore at George Carr funeral 1948 (April 30, 2013)
• Copy of Walter Moore’s death certificate; second 1948 sighting of Dobie Moore (May 9, 2013)

Credit belongs to John Bowman, who originally looked up Walter Moore’s World War II draft card; Peter Morris, who found Moore’s death record and tracked down his family; and Mark Aubrey, who pointed out that Moore’s brother Allen was listed as a ballplayer in 1930.

a grave marker for sol white

I was interviewed by Ryan Whirty for an article in the Staten Island Advance on the upcoming placement of a marker on the grave of Sol White in Frederick Douglass Memorial Park. It will happen on May 10, thanks to Jeremy Krock and the Negro League Grave Marker Project as well as the Friends of Frederick Douglass Memorial Park.

Ryan, by the way, is looking into White’s final years, his commitment to the Central Islip Psychiatric Center on Long Island and his death there in 1955 (and also the 1948 death of Cannonball Dick Redding at the nearby Pilgrim State Hospital).

ted kimbro

A few years ago I identified three Negro league players who died in connection with their military service during World War I.  Two of them—Pearl Webster and Norman Triplett—died of disease in France.  A third, Ted Kimbro, never went to France.  Here’s what James Riley wrote about him in The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues (p. 462):

“Inducted into service during World War I, he played on the Camp Dix baseball team before receiving his Army discharge.  Tragically, soon afterward his career was prematurely ended in 1918 when he died from influenza contracted while in the service.”

As it turns out, the 22-year-old Kimbro died while still in the service, on September 29, 1918, at Camp Dix, New Jersey.  Here’s an abstract of his military service record, which says he served from July 18, 1918, until his death:

The cause of Kimbro's death was bronchial pneumonia, almost certainly a consequence of influenza.  It occurred right at the height of the great influenza pandemic of 1918.  The U. S. mobilization for war served as one of the main avenues for the spread of the virus, and Camp Dix was hit hard in September and October, as nearly 8000 soldiers came down with the disease, and 774 died.  The whole huge training camp was quarantined on September 23, just a week before Kimbro passed away.

Pearl Webster was Kimbro’s teammate during the 1918 season on the Grand Central Terminal Red Caps and the Hilldale Club.  They were both inducted into the Army as draftees on July 18 and assigned to the same training unit, the 153rd Depot Brigade.  Even after this Kimbro and Webster still able to appear occasionally in games as late as September—they last appeared together for Hilldale on August 8 vs. the Chicago American Giants at Hilldale Park. Kimbro’s final known Negro league appearance was in a doubleheader for the Lincoln Giants against the Brooklyn Royal Giants at Harlem’s Olympic Field on September 1, 1918.  Four weeks later he was dead.

So Kimbro , Webster, and Triplett are the only Negro league-related figures known to have died while in the service during World War I, and Kimbro and Webster are the only ones known to have died from the flu pandemic (though I'd guess Triplett probably died from the flu as well).

Pearl Webster, Ted Kimbro, Norman Triplett

dobie moore update

Here’s a copy of the actual death certificate for Walter Moore, whose death record was found by Peter Morris, and who might be the Kansas City Monarchs shortstop Dobie Moore:

The informant, “Mildred Toles,” seems likely to be Walter’s sister, Mildred, who married James Tate.  In the 1940 census, the Tates, Walter Moore, and another sister, Anna King, lived at 1022 Alfred, the same address Walter gave on his WW2 draft card and that’s on his death certificate.

Most intriguing, though, is the information that Walter Moore had been “in this community” for 21 years.  That puts his arrival in Detroit in 1926—the very year in which Dobie Moore was shot and his Negro league career ended.

In addition, Mark Aubrey has pointed out that Walter’s younger brother Allen is listed as a “Baseball Player” in the 1930 census:

Dobie Moore’s younger brother, Pete Moore, was a Detroit ballplayer, as late as 1941:

(Chicago Defender, May 31, 1941, p. 22)

There was also a Pete Moore playing for a team called the Black Mohawks of Bradford, Pa., in the late 1920s.  Was this also Pete’s brother, and were Allen Moore and Pete Moore the same person?

If the Walter Moore we’re looking at was not Dobie Moore, it seems like quite a string of coincidences: 1) same name; 2) both were from Atlanta, and were the same age; 3) both were in Detroit in the 1930s and 1940s; 4) both had a younger brother who was also a ballplayer (I haven’t compiled the date, but there were not that many black men who listed their occupation as ballplayer in the 1930 census); 5) our Walter Moore arrived in Detroit in 1926, the same year in which Dobie Moore was forced to quit the Monarchs.

And if this Walter Moore isn’t Dobie, where’s Dobie?  I haven’t found a trace of anyone else who could be him.

However: this Walter Moore died in Detroit on August 20, 1947.  As I have noted, Dobie Moore was supposed to have been one of the pallbearers at George Carr’s funeral in Los Angeles in January, 1948.  Not only that, but I found another sighting of Dobie Moore later that year, in Chicago:

(Chicago Defender, June 19, 1948, p. 10)

These 1948 sightings of Dobie Moore could be mistakes.  And the circumstantial evidence linking this Walter Moore to the Monarch shortstop is pretty convincing.  But it would be great to get one solid link between this Walter and the ballplayer—something like a reference to Dobie’s younger brother Allen (rather than Pete), or anything giving the name of any of Dobie’s relatives, or a record or document that establishes Walter Moore of Detroit as a ballplayer himself.

the death of dobie moore?

Peter Morris, author of Game of Inches and discoverer of William Edward White’s status as the first African American ballplayer in the major leagues, has a new blog—and in his very first entry floats a possible death date for the elusive Dobie Moore.  Peter found a death record for Walter Moore, born February 8, 1895, in Atlanta, Georgia, which matches the February 8, 1896, birth date on the World War II draft card originally found by John Bowman.  Given his parents’ names (Waddie Moore and Julia Drummond), Peter was able to trace this Walter Moore’s family back to Atlanta in the 1900 census, and forward to Detroit in 1930 and 1940—and, of course, Detroit was where Dobie settled after his Negro league career ended.

As he notes, there are a number of oddities here, including the evident fact that “Walter” Moore seems to be called “Lewis” in earlier census records.  Dobie Moore had a brother, Pete, who played (presumably semipro) ball in Detroit in the 1930s, but there’s no Pete in the Moore family (could he be Allen, the brother who moved to Detroit?).

Probably the biggest issue is that this Walter Moore died on August 20, 1947.   In January, 1948, Dobie Moore, according to the Los Angeles Sentinel, served as a pallbearer at his old teammate George Carr’s funeral in Los Angeles:

(Los Angeles Sentinel, January 29, 1948, p. 11)

It’s quite possible that the Sentinel was simply wrong.  It’s also possible that the Walter Moore we’ve identified is the wrong person, too.  At this point there’s not enough information to say for sure.  If I had to bet, though, I would wager that Peter has finally found Dobie’s death date.

Anyway, I’ve ordered a copy of the actual death certificate, so we’ll see if that adds anything to what we know.

(By the way, here’s why all the other birth and death dates that have been given for Moore are almost certainly wrong.)