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negro leagues DB update: 1920-21 cuban league

(Crossposted at Seamheads.com)

The latest addition to the Seamheads Negro Leagues DB covers the 1920/21 winter league season in Cuba. Heading the bill that off-season was none other than the biggest name in baseball at the time, one George Herman Ruth, fronting the New York Giants.

The Babe was a little late, showing up only for the last half of the Giants' schedule against Habana and Almendares (see his passport application here). Most famously, this series saw Ruth get upstaged by Cuban slugger Cristóbal Torriente, who smashed three home runs in one game (albeit these were off George Kelly, not normally a pitcher) while Ruth went hitless. Torriente also added a double off Ruth himself, driving in six runs as Almendares beat the Giants 11 to 4. It wasn't until Ruth's seventh game that he finally provided the Cuban fans with a home run. The Babe ended up hitting well for the series anyway (.345/.525/.828), and the Giants won 9, lost 4, and tied 4, despite only outscoring their opponents 69 to 62.

The Giants left Havana in mid-November, and their place was taken by the Atlantic City Bacharach Giants of the Negro leagues. The team's trip was organized by its secretary, Edward B. Lamar, for many years a well-known promoter in black baseball circles and founder of the Cuban X-Giants. Lamar was actually the instigator of the first trips to Cuba by black American teams in the 20th century, sending his X-Giants to Havana several times in the 1900s. For this trip the Bacharachs brought the core of their regular team, captain and ace pitcher Dick Redding, shortstop Dick Lundy, pitcher Red Ryan, and catcher Julio Rojo, and added superstar Oscar Charleston and infielder Morten "Specs" Clark from the Indianapolis ABCs, slugger Charlie Blackwell and infielder Joe Hewitt from the St. Louis Giants, and a trio of stars from the Hilldale Club, catcher Louis Santop, spitballer Phil Cockrell, and fancy-fielding first baseman Toussaint Allen. Oliver Marcell, the Bacharachs' star third baseman, also applied for a passport, but for some reason did not make the trip.

Guided by Cuban Stars manager Tinti Molina, the Bacharachs played a (pretty unsuccessful) six-game series with Habana and Almendares, then it was decided to enter them as the third club in the regular Cuban League season.  The league used a split-season format. On December 26 Almendares player-manager Dolf Luque argued with the umpire during a game with Habana and pulled his team off the field, and then Almendares refused to show up for a game the next day against the Bacharachs. Luque was suspended and Almendares forfeited both games, but the Blues, led by Cheo Hernández (4-1, 1.62), shortstop Pelayo Chacón (.321/.418/.410), and left fielder Merito Acosta (.281/.410/.406), managed to overcome these problems to win the first half. In addition to his three-homer game against the Giants, center fielder Torriente (.306/.398/.482) set a Cuban League record by legging out three triples in one game on January 12.

The Bacharachs couldn't really get untracked, and lagged well behind in last place, despite the efforts of Charleston (.471/.514/.500), Blackwell (.367/.472/.433), Clark (.350), and Santop  (.343). They finished the first half with a 5-11 record (including the forfeit win over Almendares). After losing the opening game of the second half, the Bacharachs dropped out of the league. Inspired by second baseman Bienvenido "Hooks" Jiménez (.310/.412/.425), infielder/outfielder Manuel Cueto (.283/.383/.359), and pitchers Oscar Tuero (5-3, 1.81) and José Acosta (5-2, 1.94), Habana won six out of the eight remaining games to take the second half title and set up a best-of-three championship series.

In the playoffs, the Reds spotted Almendares one win (a three-hit shutout by Luque), then won the last two to take the pennant.

1920 passport photos for Dick Lundy, Babe Ruth, and Oscar Charleston.

negro leagues DB update: 1935 negro national league

(Crossposted at Seamheads.com)

Check out the newest addition to the Negro Leagues DB: the 1935 Negro National League season.

The defending champion Philadelphia Stars fell off quite a bit in 1935, partly because several of their key performers (Biz Mackey, Chaney White) were aging, but mostly because their ace, 1934's 20-game winner Slim Jones, couldn't stay away from the bottle. His strikeout rate was cut in half, and he won only 4 league games. Despite the efforts of the 39-year-old first baseman Jud Wilson (.344 with 14 doubles and 8 homers), the Stars finished just 34-31.

The previous year's other playoff team, the Chicago American Giants, fared even worse, though problems with 1934's statistical record make it a little hard to tell exactly what went wrong. The Big Four---Turkey Stearnes (.403/.490/.649), Willie Wells (.362/.451/.584), Mule Suttles (.298 with a league-leading 8 home runs), and Willie Foster (4-2, 2.35)---continued to play brilliantly. Bad years by Ted Trent (2-8, 4.37) and Wilson Redus (.181) might have been part of the problem.

The Nashville Elite Giants tried to move to Detroit, but couldn't secure a home park. They wound up in Columbus, Ohio. Unfortunately the local papers didn't carry many box scores, so less than half (24 out of 49) of the Elite Giants' league games are included in the DB. Even so, it's clear that stars Sammy T. Hughes (.360) and Roy Parnell (.337) continued to hit well, and that rookie outfielder Zollie Wright (.395) was seriously impressive.

Three marginal teams from 1934 (the Bacharach Giants, Cleveland Red Sox, and Baltimore Black Sox) dropped out of the league. They were replaced by the former powerhouse Homestead Grays and two new New York City clubs: the Brooklyn Eagles, playing in Ebbets Field, and the New York Cubans, who took up residence in Harlem's refurbished Dyckman Oval.

The Grays had still not recovered from the Crawfords' player raids of several seasons before, and finished in seventh place despite the contributions of first sacker Buck Leonard (.389/.455/.624), rookie second baseman Matthew Carlisle (.382/.440/.632), and catcher Tommie Dukes (.372/.449/.562), and the pitching of ace Ray Brown (8-5, 3.26).

The Brooklyn Eagles fared a little better, despite starting the season under the shadow of controversy: veteran manager Ben Taylor put in all the work to assemble and train the team, but was fired early in the season, apparently just to get his salary off the payroll. He later sued the team over the way he was treated. His replacement, first baseman George Giles, guided the Eagles to a 31-30 record with the help of infielder Harry Williams (.340), outfielder Ed Stone (.327), and a pitching staff led by the 39-year-old New England legend Will Jackman (7-8, 6.03) and the 18-year-old sensation Leon Day (6-4, 4.56).

But the most successful of the new teams was undoubtedly the New York Cubans, organized by Alex Pompez on his return from a five-year absence from baseball.  Player-manager Martín Dihigo pitched (3-1, 2.77) and played six other positions, batting .321 with 7 home runs. The ageless Alejandro Oms (.377) anchored the outfield, the youngster Lázaro Salazar provided additional offense (.341), and lefty Luis Tiant and rookie right hander Schoolboy Johnny Taylor (both 5-3) pitched well enough for the Cubans to edge the second-half title.

That put them on course to meet the first-half champion Pittsburgh Crawfords in the playoffs. The Crawfords had just missed the 1934 postseason, despite fielding one of the most talented teams in Negro league history. In 1935 they lost Satchel Paige, who absconded to North Dakota to play independent ball for the racially integrated Bismarck club (late in the season he made a couple of appearances for the Kansas City Monarchs against the American Giants). But they still had Josh Gibson (.348/.425/.578), Sam Bankhead (.355/.425/.523), Cool Papa Bell (.331), and newcomer Pat Patterson (.389/.417/.597), not to mention lefty Leroy Matlock. In games with box scores Matlock went 7-0 in the regular season (and 1-1 in the playoffs); in games without box scores he won at least 6 more games without a known defeat, making him at least 13-0 for the year in Negro league games (14-1 counting the playoffs).

When the Cubans and Crawfords clashed in September, it resulted in another classic blackball postseason series. The Cubans stunned Pittsburgh with two quick wins behind lefthanders Frank Blake and Neck Stanley. In game 3 Leroy Matlock shut out the Cubans, 3 to 0, with manager Oscar Charleston contributing a home run, but in the next game his opposite number, Martín Dihigo, beat the Crawfords 6 to 1 at Greenlee Field to put his team ahead 3 games to 1.

In game 5 Roosevelt Davis managed to edge Frank Blake, 3 to 2. The last two games were played in Philadelphia. With the Cubans leading 5 to 3 in the seventh inning of game 6, Dihigo put himself in to pitch. The Cubans added one more run, stretching their lead to 6 to 3, but the Crawfords rallied in the bottom of the ninth. Oscar Charleston smashed out a three-run home run to tie the game. Pat Patterson followed with a double, and Judy Johnson rapped out a pinch-hit single to win the game for Pittsburgh.

The deciding game saw a back-and-forth struggle for seven innings. In the top of the eighth inning Dihigo brought in Taylor to relieve Tiant, and the first two men to face him, Gibson and Charleston, hit back-to-back homers. Two walks and two outs later, Cool Papa Bell, with men on first and third, hit a sharp grounder to Dihigo, who was playing third. Dihigo fumbled the ball, allowing Sam Bankhead to score. The Crawfords were up, 8 to 4.

The Cubans got one run back in the bottom of the eighth, then in the ninth Clyde Spearman hit a two-run homer to bring the score to 8 to 7---but that was as close as they could get. For the first (and only) time the Pittsburgh Crawfords had won the unambiguous, undisputed championship of the Negro National League.

The 1935 Pittsburgh Crawfords, champions of the Negro National League.

negro leagues DB update: 1923-24 cuban league

(Crossposted at Seamheads.com)

Possibly for the first time anywhere (and certainly for the first time in recent history) the Seamheads DB is presenting (nearly) complete statistics for both the 1923/24 Cuban League season as well as the 1924 Gran Premio that followed it. (We're missing only a single box score.)

The 1923/24 Santa Clara club is the most legendary team in Cuban history, the island's equivalent of the 1927 Yankees. Tinti Molina had taken the 1922/23 Santa Clara team, which might have been best in the league but had walked out after a mid-season dispute over a disallowed win, and added Dobie Moore, Reuben Curry, and Heavy Johnson of the NNL champion Kansas City Monarchs. The '23/'24 Leopardos featured its own Murderers' Row consisting of Moore, Oscar Charleston, Alejandro Oms, and Oliver Marcell, along with guest appearances by Johnson (for the first part of the season) and Esteban Montalvo (the team's fourth outfielder). Their pitching was solid, led by the Negro league trio of Curry, Dave Brown, and Bill Holland, along with Pedro Dibut (who would appear for the Cincinnati Reds in 1924). By mid-January the Leopardos were 36-11 and 11 ½ games ahead of second-place Habana, and the league called it quits.

The last-place Marianao Elefantes disbanded and the team's players were redistributed among the other three teams, and started a new competition, the Grand Winter Championship (Gran Premio Invernal), to be played in a split-season format, with the winners of the two halves facing off in a championship series at the end. Santa Clara won the first half. Not until the second half of this second season did the Leopardos falter, with Almendares taking the second-half title of the Gran Premio. By this time, however, it was March, and all three teams were starting to lose players to spring training in the U.S.---so the playoff between Almendares and Santa Clara was cancelled. When the won/lost records for the two halves of the Gran Premio were added up, Santa Clara came out on top again---barely.

Also, with the help of historian Todd Peterson, we've added a number of new games and teams for the years 1903 to 1913. In coming weeks we'll be adding the 1935 and 1936 Negro National League, the East-West All-Star Games, the Mexican League, the 1926 Eastern Colored League, and more Cuban League seasons.

The 1923/24 Santa Clara Leopardos.

negro leagues DB update: 1927-28 cuban league

Imagine a last-place team with no fewer than three future Hall of Famers on its roster, all in their prime.  That's the story of the Cuba Baseball Club of the 1927/28 Cuban Winter League, which we've added to the DB.  Despite the efforts of Oscar Charleston (.350/.481/.567, a league-leading 32 walks in 34 games), Willie Foster (6-8, 3.17), and Judy Johnson (.333/.375/.439), the Cuba team finished deep in the cellar with a 12-21-1 record.

Almendares (17-15-1) put up more of a fight. Player-manager Adolfo Luque (6-4, a league-best 2.64 ERA) led an otherwise ordinary staff, but los Azules were able to send some decent hitters to the plate, including Dick Lundy (.346/.365/.496), Oliver Marcell (.339/.398/.424), and Chaney White (.367/.398/.422), all from the two-time Eastern Colored League champion Bacharach Giants.

Still, they couldn't quite match the champion Habana Leones (20-13), led by MVP Martín Dihigo, who pitched (4-2, 3.10) and played outfield and first base while hitting .389/.453/.588 with a league-leading 14 doubles.   Left fielder Jud Wilson (.431/.535/.724) was far and away the league's best hitter.  And Dihigo, along with Oscar Levis (7-2, 3.14) and Cliff Bell (6-2, 3.14), gave los Rojos a solid trio of pitchers.

In the works for the DB: the 1935 & 1936 Negro leagues,  the 1926 Eastern Colored League, the 1923/24 Cuban League, the Mexican League, the East-West All-Star Games, and more.

An unlucky trio: Willie Foster, Oscar Charleston, and Judy Johnson, the first two in their Cuba Baseball Club uniforms.

(Cross-posted at Seamheads.com)

negro leagues DB update: 1934 negro national league

(Crossposted at Seamheads.com)

The latest addition to the Negro Leagues DB includes the 1934 Negro National League plus four important independent clubs from that year.  The league enjoyed more stability this year.  Once again pursuing a split-season format, the NNL started the first half with six clubs: the Pittsburgh Crawfords, Chicago American Giants, and Nashville Elite Giants were retained from 1933, while the Philadelphia Stars, Newark Dodgers and Cleveland Red Sox were added to the fold.  The Homestead Grays, Baltimore Black Sox, and Philadelphia Bacharach Giants withdrew from the league, although the Grays were associate members.  The Kansas City Monarchs and New York Black Yankees also opted to stay out.

The American Giants, led by Turkey Stearnes (.356/.407/.601) and Mule Suttles (.315/.378/.450), were the first-half champions.*  In the second half the league added the Black Sox and Bacharachs. The Philadelphia Stars rode the young arm of 21-year-old lefty Slim Jones (20-6, 1.31, 170 Ks in 212 innings) and the veteran bat of 38-year-old Jud Wilson (.360/.436/.500) to the second half title, setting up a playoff matchup against the American Giants for the league championship.  In a thrilling series, the Stars fell behind three game to one, but rallied to tie the series at three apiece.  Then in the final game on October 2 Jones secured the NNL pennant with a five-hit shutout.

The Pittsburgh Crawfords, 1933 champions, were left out in the cold, having failed to win either half despite great performances from Satchel Paige (13-2, 1.45, 141 Ks in 136 innings), Josh Gibson (.318/.385/.607, 12 home runs), and player-manager Oscar Charleston (.324/.403/.505).

This was perhaps Satchel Paige's greatest year, which is saying a lot.  On the Fourth of July he no-hit the Homestead Grays while striking out 17.  He was the winning pitcher in the East's 1 to 0 victory in the East-West All-Star Game.  In August Gus Greenlee loaned him out to the bearded (and otherwise all-white) House of David team for a tournament of independent and semipro teams sponsored by the Denver Post.  He won three games in five days to pitch the Davids to the championship, including a crucial 2 to 1 win (with 12 strikeouts) over a Kansas City Monarchs team that had been reinforced by Willie Foster, Turkey Stearnes, and Sam Bankhead.  To top the season off, Paige beat 30-game-winner and World Series champion Dizzy Dean (fronting a semipro team) in late October.

Satchel Paige and his young counterpart, Slim Jones, were so dominant that in September two special showdowns were scheduled in Yankee Stadium.  The first, on September 9, ended in a 1 to 1 deadlock.  In the rematch (which forced a delay in the NNL playoffs) Satchel prevailed, 3 to 1. He fanned seven, walked nobody, and allowed the eventual league champs only five hits.  Jones pitched well, but three unearned runs gave the Crawfords the win.

This would be the high water mark for Stuart Jones.  Alcoholism ruined his career and within four years he would be dead.  Satchel Paige, of course, kept on going, and going, and going, all the way to the major leagues and the Hall of Fame.

*-Note that the historical record really does the American Giants a major injustice in 1934.  In games with box scores the team went 18-21-3, but in games without box scores the Giants were 19-5.   Individual Giants' players surely take a statistical hit because of this.  It's hard not to think that Willie Wells, who hit only .204 in games we're able to include, probably did a lot better in those 24 missing games.

Slim Jones and Satchel Paige

 

UPDATE 10/24/2013  Patrick Rock writes:

“Paige’s Fourth of July no-hitter figures large in his self-made myth.  Years later He claimed (I’m recalling his story from memory) that he drove 12+ hours to pitch another shutout in another town the very next night (sometimes he recalled it as another no-hitter).



“The truth is that Paige's next start was four days later in Chicago, where he threw a 5-hit, 8-K, 10-inning shutout, and beat Sug Cornelius’ 9-inning no-hitter.  Cornelius gave up 5 hits after one out in the 10th and lost to Satch and the Crawfords 3-0.



“Even if it wasn’t the very next night, it WAS a shutout (and an extra-inning shutout), and won despite his own team being no-hit.  Yeah, the man was very good that year.”

negro leagues DB update: 1922-23 cuban league

We're making a small but important addition to the DB today—the 1922/23 Cuban winter league, plus a few additional games for 1916, 1919, and 1922.

After a few seasons of turbulence in the Cuban game, the 1922/23 season marked a new beginning.  The league added two new teams, Santa Clara and Marianao, to the Habana-Almendares duopoly.  Santa Clara was run by Tinti Molina, who put together the most famous outfield in Cuban baseball history: Alejandro Oms (.411) in left, Oscar Charleston (.418) in center, and Pablo Mesa (.286) in right.  Molina also added lefty Dave Brown (5-4, 2.47) and a few other stateside stars, and the Leopardos sprinted to the league lead---but after a victory over Marianao was thrown out by league authorities, Santa Clara angrily withdrew.  They would be vindicated the following winter, when the 1923-24 Santa Clara Leopardos emerged as the most legendary team in Cuban history, the island's equivalent of the 1927 Yankees.

Of the three remaining teams, Almendares could boast of outfielders  Bernardo Baró (.403/.452/.544) and Valentín Dreke (.324), manager-shortstop Joseíto Rodríguez (.316), and minor league southpaw Eddie LePard (7-5, 2.17), but Habana would probably have been considered the favorite.  Los Leones featured both the best everyday player in Cuban baseball at the time, Cristóbal Torriente (.344/.435/.515) and the best Cuban pitcher (and perhaps the best pitcher in baseball, period), Dolf Luque.  In 1923, Luque would go 27-8 with a 1.93 ERA for the Cincinnati Reds.  In the 1922/23 Cuban League, he went 11-7, 1.53.

Yet both of these traditional powers fell short in the end.  It was the brand new Marianao club, led by player-manager Merito Acosta, that claimed a surprise championship.  Acosta himself contributed a .282 average and a league-leading 32 walks.  Right-hander Lucas Boada was acclaimed as "el nuevo diamante negro" ("the new black diamond"; that is, the new José Méndez) as he tied Luque with 11 victories.  Veterans José María Fernández  (.304), Manuel Cueto (.288), and Pelayo Chacón (.307) also played important roles in what was a true team effort for Marianao.

The Marianao club, champions of the 1922-23 Cuban League.

A couple of important notes:

1) We are still missing box scores for six games, all of them Santa Clara home games.  Since the Leopardos won four of those six games, the Santa Clara players are probably slightly disadvantaged in the stats we're able to present.

2) You may notice that other sources have Santa Clara going 14-13, rather than 15-12, as we've got it here.  We've checked this very carefully, and 15-12 is the correct W/L record for games actually played.  I'll write this up in more detail in the next couple of days.

In the works for the DB: 1925 & 1934 Negro leagues, East-West All-Star Games, Mexican League 1937-1954, Cuban League 1918-19, 1919-20, 1920-21, and 1927-28, and much more.

(Crossposted at Seamheads.com)

negro leagues DB update: 1928 NNL & ECL

The 1928 Negro National League champion St. Louis Stars.

Today we add the 1928 Negro leagues to the DB.  This was the year the Eastern Colored League fell apart, putting an end to the first edition of the Black World Series.  Meanwhile the Negro National League continued with a split-season format.  The St. Louis Stars won the first half going away; in the second half, the American Giants just edged the Stars and the Kansas City Monarchs, setting up an NNL championship series with St. Louis that would take the place of the World Series that year.

The problems that doomed the ECL in 1928 had roots going back several years, involving arguments about schedules, players, parks, umpires, and money.  The first real warning signs cropped up in 1927, when the New York Lincoln Giants were kicked out of the ECL for signing the outfielder Estéban Montalvo away from the western Cuban Stars, thus violating the peace deal that had been in effect between the two leagues since 1924.  The Lincolns were readmitted in spring 1928, in exchange for giving Montalvo back to the Cuban Stars.  But then Harrisburg Giants owner Colonel Strothers decided he could no longer afford to bankroll his club, a perennial contender, and folded the team (though the Giants would return midway through 1928 with a less-distinguished roster).  Soon after that Nat Strong's Brooklyn Royal Giants resigned from the league, and the next day Ed Bolden pulled his Hilldale Club, perhaps the ECL's flagship franchise, out of the circuit.  Even with the Lincolns back in the fold, the ECL was still reduced to four clubs.

A Philadelphia gangster named Smittie Lucas had put together a team he called the Eastern League Stars, an all-star team originally intended only for spring play.  Desperate for more teams, especially one based in Philadelphia, the league admitted Lucas's club---though he had to return most of his stars to their original teams, and the name of his outfit was eventually changed to the Philadelphia Tigers.  Another new club, the Brooklyn Stars, failed to materialize.  So the Eastern Colored League started the 1928 season with five teams.

Harmony didn't last long.  When the Harrisburg Giants left the league, their players were divvied up among the other clubs, and outfielders Rap Dixon and Fats Jenkins were awarded to Baltimore.  While Dixon signed with the Black Sox, Jenkins refused, and started appearing for the Lincoln Giants under the pseudonym "Williams."  Other disagreements ensued involving the scheduling of games with independent clubs, particularly Hilldale, and by late May the Lincolns and Cuban Stars had left the league.  Plans to replace them with Syd Pollock's Havana Red Sox and other teams came to nothing, and the Eastern Colored League was finally through.

It's not certain when exactly the league came to end, and no "final" standings were ever published.  If games through May 20 are counted, then the Baltimore Black Sox ended with the best record at 9-3, with five of their wins coming against the Philadelphia Tigers.  The teams continued to play each other (with the exception of the Black Sox and Lincoln Giants, where lingering bad feeling about the Jenkins incident kept them apart through the whole season).  We've chosen to present the standings for all games played between the ECL clubs throughout the 1928 season.  By this measure the Bacharach Giants, champions in 1926 and 1927, took the virtual 1928 ECL pennant as well, with an 18-12 record.

The Bacharachs were helped to this record by none other than Fats Jenkins (.365/.425/.464), whom they immediately stole from the Lincoln Giants when the league dissolved.  Chaney White (.371/.424/.517), player-manager Dick Lundy (.338/.401/.498), and Rats Henderson (8-2, 3.42) also contributed, as did double threat Luther Farrell (.395/.489/.618, 9-7 as a pitcher).  The Baltimore Black Sox enjoyed great seasons from Rap Dixon (.398/.478/.701), Jud Wilson (.399/.492/.652), and Laymon Yokely (12-6, 2.77).  The 44-year-old John Henry Lloyd hit .383 against top black clubs for his Lincoln Giants, while his double play partner, George Scales, hit .328/.416/.605 (which doesn't include a 6 for 6, two home run performance against Hilldale, since a box score hasn't been found yet).  Alex Pompez's Cuban Stars struggled without renaissance man Martín Dihigo, though former Boston Red Sox infielder Ramón Herrera contributed a .331 average, new captain José María Fernández (replacing Pelayo Chacón after 12 years) hit .333, and infielder Angel Alfonso scorched the ball for a .489 average and .872 slugging percentage in 12 games against top black competition.

The Hilldale Club, the team whose abandonment of the ECL probably doomed it, may have been the best club on the east coast in 1928.  Bolden scooped up Oscar Charleston (.346/.449/.605), Walter Cannady (.325/.389/.490), and Darltie Cooper (10-5, 2.39) from the defunct Harrisburg Giants, and used them to revitalize a cast that already included Biz Mackey (.342/.410/.533).  The Homestead Grays grabbed John Beckwith (.306) from Harrisburg, and had already signed Martín Dihigo (.313, 4 homers) away from Pompez in 1927.  The Grays also pirated a couple of NNL stars, enticing lefty Sam Streeter (4-2) to leave the Birmingham Black Barons and Jelly Gardner to abandon the American Giants.  Making the most of a limited opportunity, a 33-year-old West Virginia coal miner named Grover Lewis blasted three home runs for the Grays in a game against Hilldale before disappearing back to Appalachian semipro ball.  (If you haven't already seen it, check out Scott Simkus's great piece about Lewis in a back issue of the Seamheads Outsider Baseball Bulletin.)

Over in the Negro National League, Candy Jim Taylor had been quietly incubating a powerful Stars lineup over the past few seasons; this was the year his patience would bear fruit, as the Stars dominated from the start.  Mule Suttles (.365, 21 home runs), Willie Wells (.357, 21), and Wilson Redus (.352, 22) took full advantage of the 250-foot left field fence at Stars Park, caused by the intrusion of a trolley car barn into the outfield.  Given all those runs to play with, right-handed curveballer Ted Trent pitched well enough (2.36 ERA, 121 strikeouts in214 innings) to go 19-3.  Slap Hensley, Luther McDonald, and Johnny Williams added solid mound work, while Roosevelt Davis became the closest thing to a relief ace the Negro leagues had so far seen, going 8-0 while relieving in twice as many games as he started (15 to 8).

The American Giants relied on the arms of Willie Foster (13-8, 2.82) and Willie Powell (9-6, 2.00) and the bats of Steel Arm Davis (.319/.364/.442) and shortstop Pythias Russ (.339/.372/.431), a converted catcher whose career was cut short when he died of tuberculosis in 1930 at the age of only 26.  The Monarchs lacked the slugging they had become known for in the early 1920s, when they could boast the likes of Dobie Moore and Heavy Johnson in their lineup.  They were now a team that relied on speed, pitching, and glovework.  Andy Cooper (12-7, 3.38) led the pitchers, while catcher Frank Duncan, shortstop Newt Allen, and center fielder Eddie Dwight (whose speed drew comparisons with Cool Papa Bell) anchored a solid defense.  Bullet Rogan, now 34, hit .348/.405/.512, went 10-2 as a pitcher, and even filled in at second base---in addition to managing the team. (He also clouted 3 home runs in a 16-2 route of the Detroit Stars played in Clinton, Missouri, but a box score hasn't been found yet.) This formula worked well enough to give the Monarchs the second-best overall record, although they agonizingly fell short of winning either half.

Utility man Wilson "Stack" Martin got the Detroit Stars' season off to a great start when he hit 6 for 6 on opening day.  Turkey Stearnes popped a league-leading 24 homers, Big George Mitchell went 13-8, Ed Rile, a 6'7" converted pitcher, hit .348/.425/.508, and veteran second baseman Claude Johnson drew a league-leading 40 walks---but these Stars couldn't keep up with the other Stars, finishing in third place overall.  Meanwhile, in a breakout sophomore season the Birmingham Black Barons' Leroy "Satchel" Paige (11-4, 2.32, a league-leading 121 strikeouts in 132 innings) served notice of what was to come.  He couldn't quite lift the Black Barons to a .500 record; while a couple of other pitchers were decent, the hitting was abject, with only Roy Parnell (.316/.365/.503) able to contribute much.

Player-manager Carl Glass (12-10, 2.96) and catcher Larry Brown (.265, sterling defense) were still the mainstays of the otherwise woeful Memphis Red Sox. Of Cleveland's fifth attempt at an NNL team, the Tigers, the less said the better, though it's worth noting the nearly heroic performance of Edward "Babe" Milton, who played eight positions while hitting .354 with 13 triples for an otherwise terrible team.

Tinti Molina's Cuban Stars suffered through one of their worst seasons ever, finishing dead last with a team that managed only two home runs in 47 games.  Most mysteriously, Estéban Montalvo, the slugger who was so good the Lincoln Giants had quit the ECL rather than give him up in 1927, and who had once hit three home runs in a single ECL game all by himself, couldn't hit the side of a barn in 1928, managing only a .136/.219/.189 line.  It's hard not to think that he was perhaps not properly motivated to play for Molina, the manager he'd tried to escape the year before---although in retrospect, he may also have been suffering the early effects of the illness that would finally kill him in 1930.

The league championship was a classic, as recounted by Kevin Johnson.  The teams split four games in Chicago; before the series moved to St. Louis, Chicago's number two starter, Willie Powell, was shot in the face by his father-in-law during a domestic altercation.  He would survive and continue his pitching career, but he was out of this series.  In St. Louis the Stars shortstop Willie Wells took over, blasting six home runs in the last five games (our stats cover only three of them, as two box scores are missing), and the Stars prevailed 5 games to 4.

Crossposted at Seamheads.com.

negro leagues DB update: 1933

Satchel Paige, Gus Greenlee, Josh Gibson

This week we're making a slight break with chronological order and adding the 1933 Negro leagues to the Seamheads Negro Leagues DB. Many thanks to Scott Simkus, the creator of the Strat-O-Matic Negro leagues set, who did most of the heavy lifting on this.

The year 1933 marked something of a fresh beginning for the Negro leagues, with the start of a new league and the inauguration of what became black baseball's biggest event, the annual East-West All-Star Game. The Eastern Colored League had fallen apart in early 1928; its successor, the American Negro League, lasted only a single season. When the Depression broke up the original Negro National League in 1931, it was left to the Negro Southern League to expand temporarily into the north, while Cumberland Posey's East-West League failed to last through the 1932 season. So in 1933 numbers king Gus Greenlee, owner of the independent Pittsburgh Crawfords, started a new Negro National League, one that, unlike Rube Foster's original, tried to bring the east coast and the Midwest together.

The tough economic times continued, and it was hard for Greenlee to keep the league up and going. The Chicago American Giants were evicted from Schorling Park, their home since the team's founding by Rube Foster back in 1911, when it was turned into a dog racing track When the Indianapolis A.B.C.'s moved to Detroit due to low attendance, the American Giants moved to Indianapolis and started playing their home games in the A.B.C.'s former park, Perry Stadium. The Homestead Grays were kicked out in July for poaching two players (Big Jim Williams and Jimmy Binder) from Detroit. Syd Pollock's Cuban Stars opted against taking the Grays' place, and subsequent attempts at placing teams in Akron and Cleveland didn't last long. In the end only the American Giants, Nashville Elite Giants, and Greenlee's own Pittsburgh Crawfords finished the season. The Crawfords and the American Giants both claimed the championship; it wasn't until well into the 1934 season that the Giants conceded the 1933 title to Pittsburgh.

The Crawfords are possibly the most famous team in Negro league history, featuring five Hall of Famers. Their offense was led by the 21-year-old Josh Gibson, by far the league's dominant hitter (.411, 14 home runs), and the 35-year-old first baseman/manager Oscar Charleston (.352, 12 homers). Their pitching may have been even more impressive, with southpaws Sam Streeter (8-2, 2.62) and Leroy Matlock (7-5) and right-hander Bert Hunter (8-1) taking pressure off the undisputed star, Satchel Paige. Paige's won-lost record (4-6) doesn't look like much, but he struck out 77 hitters in 80 innings, sported the Negro leagues' best ERA (2.03). In four of his ten starts against major Negro league competition, Paige suffered 2-0, 2-1, 2-1, and 3-1 losses.

As great as the Crawfords look, the American Giants were more than worthy rivals, with four future Hall of Famers of their own. Though Rube Foster was dead, under the management of Foster protégé Dave Malarcher the Giants had scooped up several of the star players cut loose by the end of Foster's old Negro National League, most notably Willie Wells and Mule Suttles from the defunct St. Louis Stars, and Turkey Stearnes (.346/.404/.590) from the old Detroit Stars. Together with a pitching staff led by Rube's younger brother Willie Foster (6-4, 2.56), the Giants' stars took the first half pennant, and pushed the Crawfords the whole way during the second half.

The Nashville Elite Giants couldn't quite keep up with the big boys, but they did feature fine performances from veteran lefthander Percy "Dimps" Miller (6-2, 3.01), outfielder Wild Bill Wright (.336), catcher Tommie Dukes (.340), and second baseman Sammy T. Hughes (.341). The Baltimore Black Sox, now owned by Joe Cambria, had lost a court battle with former investors and lost the rights to the "Black Sox" name---they played the 1933 season as the Baltimore Sox, with shortstop Jake Dunn (.392) and a towering young southpaw named Stuart Jones (5-3) providing some rare bright spots. The Columbus Blue Birds, managed by Dizzy Dismukes, seemed promising at first, but good hitting from outfielder Jabbo Andrews (.398) and shortstop Leroy Morney (.382) couldn't make up for poor pitching.

The Akron Grays were cobbled together out of players from church teams and local sandlots in both Akron and Pontiac, Michigan, along with a few journeyman veterans (catcher Clarence "Spoony" Palm and outfielder Lou Dials) and a couple of high-profile pitchers on loan from other league teams (Bert Hunter from the Crawfords, Willie Powell from the American Giants). They pretty much performed to expectation. The Cleveland Giants started the 1933 season as a semipro team featuring a female infielder named Isabelle Baxter; upon entering the league they were provided with a roster drawn from the other defunct Ohio teams (Akron and Columbus). They only managed to complete a single league game, a 14 to 7 loss to the Crawfords, then failed to show up for subsequent games in Pittsburgh and Nashville. Disputes over these forfeits contributed greatly to the confusion that marred the season's conclusion.

Greenlee's league aspired to take in the whole blackball world, but several important teams were leery of committing themselves. The Kansas City Monarchs remained aloof, preferring for the most part to barnstorm. The New York Black Yankees (who, despite their name, actually operated out of Hinchliffe Stadium in Paterson, New Jersey) claimed the world's colored championship after defeating the Crawfords in a late-season series. Ed Bolden, the key figure behind the old Eastern Colored League, had lost control of his Hilldale Club (which folded after the 1932 season), but founded a new independent team, originally known as Bolden's Philadelphia All-Stars. Behind the hitting of Rap Dixon (.394/.462/.628) and Jud Wilson (.372/.456/.551), the Stars served notice that they would be a team to be reckoned with in the future.

Next up for the DB: 1928 and 1934 Negro leagues; East-West All-Star Games; Mexican League 1937-1954; 1918/19 through 1922/23 and 1927/28 Cuban leagues, including Babe Ruth's famous appearance in Havana with the New York Giants in 1920.

(Crossposted at Seamheads.com)

negro leagues DB update: florida hotel league, cuban league, 1899-1900 negro leagues

(Crossposted at Seamheads.com)

We've just added the following to the DB: the 1916/17 Cuban Winter League, the 1917 and 1918 Florida Hotel League, and a handful of games from the 1899 and 1900 seasons, as well as new games for 1904, 1905, 1906, 1907, 1908, and 1912.

In 1899 the Cuban X Giants came west to play the two Chicago clubs, the Unions (which had existed since the 1880s) and the Columbia Giants, formerly the Page Fence Giants of Adrian, Michigan, which had moved to Chicago under the auspices of the Columbia Club, a local social organization. In addition, 1899 saw Abel Linares organize the first tour of Cuban professionals in the United States. The All-Cubans played a pair of grudge matches against the Cuban X Giants in Hoboken, ostensibly motivated by the (real) Cubans' desire to uphold the honor of their national name.

The following season saw both the Cuban X Giants and the Genuine Cuban Giants come west. That season the American League's new Chicago White Sox built a new park on the South Side at the corner of 39th and Wentworth. Unfortunately this was across the street from the Columbia Giants' park (the former Daly Park, home of the white semipro Daly Baseball Club), and just a couple of blocks away from the Unions' home grounds, at 37th and Butler. Eventually the major leaguers would drive both black teams out of the neighborhood, although the Columbias did use the White Sox park as their home field in 1902. (It would later, as Schorling Park, become the home field for the Chicago American Giants for many years.)

William "Hippo" Galloway, of the 1900 Cuban X Giants, had become in 1899 simultaneously the last black player to appear openly in organized baseball in North America (with the Woodstock club of the Canadian League) and the first black player to appear in a hockey league (with Woodstock in the Central Ontario Hockey Association).

Jumping forward a few years, in the winter of 1916/17 Cuban baseball saw yet another group of organizers put together a new circuit, which they called the Cuban-American League, despite the complete absence of American players. The old Almendares Park had been torn down, and the games were played in Marianao's Oriental Park, which was actually a horse racing venue.

Oriental Park, 1921

The Almendares players were reassembled under the name "Orientals" (or Orientales), while Habana reappeared as the "Red Sox" (Medias Rojas). The traditional third Havana team, Fe, no longer existed, and the previous season's attempt to replace them with a team called San Francisco Park had ended in abject failure. So this year Tinti Molina and Abel Linares simply decided to enter their barnstorming Cuban Stars as the third team, under the name "White Sox" (Medias Blancas).

It took so long to organize everything that the league did not get underway until February 1917, and lasted only 15 games. Dolf Luque pitched and hit well for the Orientals (1.84 ERA, .355 average), and his team did just enough to take the pennant with an 8-6 record.

At exactly the same time as the brief Cuban-American League season, Palm Beach hosted the annual series between teams representing the Royal Poinciana Hotel (managed this year by Rube Foster) and the Breakers Hotel (managed by Joe Williams). The Cuban-American lefty Juan Padrón had been slated to join the Cuban Stars / White Sox in Cuba, but instead he turned up here, pitching for Foster. He started against Joe Williams four times, winning three with one tie. Overall he went 5-2 with three shutouts and an 0.61 ERA, providing just enough for the Poincianas to edge the Breakers 7 games to 6. The winter of 1917/18 saw no formal league organized in Cuba, but the Palm Beach series continued. Juan Padrón switched sides, but managed only a single win this time. Meanwhile Dick Whitworth went 5-0, 1.07, for the Poincianas. That was enough for Foster's team to win 9 out of 14 games.

Coming up for the DB: the 1933 Negro league season, the East-West All-Star Games, the Mexican League, more Cuban seasons, and a lot more.

 

Bill Galloway, Juan Padrón, Dick Whitworth

negro leagues DB update: 1915/16 cuban league & florida hotel league

Eustaquio Pedroso, John Donaldson, Joe Williams

This week we've added two leagues from the 1915/16 winter season---the Cuban League and the Florida Hotel League---along with the 1907 Southern Championship contested between the Birmingham Giants and San Antonio Black Bronchos.

In Cuba, due to a labor dispute, the old Cuban National League was no more, replaced by a player-led league, the Cuban National Association. The players of the three former clubs--Almendares, Fe, and Habana---reorganized themselves into teams called Almendares Park, Habana Park, and San Francisco Park, presumably unable to use the old team names for legal reasons.

In 1914/15 Fe, despite hiring Spot Poles, Dick Redding, and several other black players from the United States, had finished with an abject 5-28 record. So it probably seemed safe for San Francisco Park, the team that took Fe's place, to dispense with the Americans and add Eustaquio Pedroso, perhaps the most valuable player in Cuban baseball the past couple of winters. But Pedroso soon switched back to Almendares Park and San Francisco Park lost 21 out of 22 games, whereupon the league sent to the United States for Rube Foster and his Chicago American Giants to replace them. Foster's team, still playing under the San Francisco name, won 5 and lost 9 before returning to the U.S., and a thrown-together outfit lost the club's last three scheduled games. Altogether, the three different versions of San Francisco Park fielded a total of 56 players.

Despite the cosmetic name changes, Almendares and Habana fielded similar teams to their 1914/15 editions. Habana Park again featured mostly players from organized baseball in the U.S., including major leaguers Armando Marsans and Mike González, but lost the pennant to Almendares Park. The eventual champions starred Cristóbal Torriente (.401/.491/.562), Manuel Cueto (.403/.481/.493), Gervasio González (.370/.517/.407, with a league-leading 32 walks), and Dolf Luque (12-5, 2.80), along with the two-way threat Pedroso, who hit .451 and went 9-2 as a pitcher after leaving San Francisco Park for Almendares.

This would be the last winter season in old Almendares Park, which was torn down and replaced by a new stadium in time for the 1918/19 season.

Meanwhile in Palm Beach, Florida, the New York Lincoln Giants and the Indianapolis ABCs clashed in a 15-game series. The annual Florida Hotel League, also known as the Coconut League, had taken place from January to March since at least the mid-1900s. The teams represented the exclusive Breakers Hotel and Royal Poinciana Hotel. The 1916 series saw John Donaldson, already a legendary, fireballing southpaw for J. L. Wilkinson's All-Nations Club, make his big-time blackball debut. It was a rough start, as the equally legendary Cyclone Joe Williams out-dueled him several times. Unfortunately we only have box scores for 6 of 15 games that year, and in those games Donaldson went 0-4.

Our additions to the DB also bring us back to the start of Joe Williams's career at the age of 21, with the San Antonio Black Bronchos in 1907, playing for the Southern black championship against C. I. Taylor's Birmingham Giants.

(Crossposted at Seamheads.com)