Agate Type

the georgia rabbit

I’ve long been puzzled by two facts of Walter Ball’s biography: he’s commonly listed in reference books as “George Walter Ball,” and given the nickname “The Georgia Rabbit.”  Both are problematic:

1) I have never seen a contemporary reference to Walter Ball as anything but Walter Ball, and the few official documents I’ve been able to find (passenger lists, census records, draft cards, death certificate) give his name as…Walter Ball.  His World War I draft card gives him a middle name, Thomas.   So, as far as I can tell, his name was Walter Thomas Ball—no George involved.

2) And all sources agree that he was born in Detroit, Michigan, had moved to Minnesota by the time he was 14, and played his entire professional career for Northern teams—so why would he have been called “The Georgia Rabbit”?

After looking into it a little, I found a single reference that I believe explains both of these problems.  It’s a passage from Sol White’s History of Colored Base Ball, originally published in 1907, toward the very end of the original text (p. 118 in the Jerry Malloy edition):

Here White appears to be calling Ball “George Washington Ball” and giving him the nickname “Georgia Rabbit.”  Okay, fair enough—Sol White, after all, was there, and has to be considered the leading authority on this era, plus the book was published right in the middle of Ball’s career. 

Except for one curious fact: White calls him George Washington Ball, but historians have apparently chosen to interpret “Washington” as a mistake for “Walter.”

Many years later, in 1931, White wrote a piece for the New York Age about the Philadelphia Giants in which he discussed roster changes forced in 1907 by the defection of the team’s biggest star, Rube Foster:

(New York Age, January 3, 1931, p. 6)

So White is saying here that he signed “the Georgia Rabbit” for the Philadelphia Giants.  There’s only one problem with this: Walter Ball never pitched for the Philadelphia Giants.  He did suit up for the 1906 Philadelphia Quaker Giants, a team organized by the McMahon brothers to try to cut in on the Philly Giants’ market, but he never did play for Sol White & Walter Schlichter’s club.  As for 1907, Ball split the year between two Midwestern teams, the new St. Paul Gophers and the Chicago Leland Giants, and spent 1908 with the Lelands and the Minneapolis Keystones.

Also reprinted in Malloy’s edition of the History of Colored Base Ball is an interview of Sol White by Floyd Calvin, which was originally published in the Pittsburgh Courier, March 12, 1927.  Much of it consists of a chronological account of White’s career.  Here’s the entry for 1907 (from the original version in the Courier), again about new players on the Philadelphia Giants that year:

(Pittsburgh Courier, March 12, 1927, p. A4)

Taken literally, this seems to imply that White signed a pitcher named George Washington (not “George Washington Ball”) along with someone else called “G. A. Rabbit.” 

No one named “Rabbit” ever appeared in a Philadelphia Giants’ box score, to my knowledge.  There was, on the other hand, a pitcher named George Washington on Sol White’s team in 1907 and 1908.  He didn’t pitch against any black professional teams in 1907, so he doesn’t appear in the Seamheads DB for that year, but he was with the Giants—for example:

(Philadelphia Inquirer, June 14, 1907)

It’s my opinion that “George Walter Ball, the Georgia Rabbit” was born as a result of a lost comma in Sol White’s book. 

White was listing pitchers by last name until he got to George Washington, not as well-known as the others.  What he meant to write was “McClellan, Bowman, Foster, Holland, Merritt, George Washington (Georgia Rabbit), Ball, Wilson, Davis and Buckner,” but by some mishap the comma after “(Georgia Rabbit)” was omitted, making it look like he was talking about somebody named George Washington Ball, nicknamed Georgia Rabbit.  This was, by pure coincidence, compounded by another punctuation mishap 20 years later, the next time (as far as I know) White talked publicly about Washington.  Floyd Calvin misread White’s or his own notes, and where White meant to say “George Washington (pitcher, Georgia Rabbit),” Calvin misunderstood it as a separate player named “G. A. Rabbit.”

I don’t know very much about George Washington, but what little I do know includes two facts that seem very relevant here.  1) Unlike Walter Ball, George Washington was from Georgia—he was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1874.  And 2), Washington may also have played for the baseball team organized by the Rabbit’s Foot Company, a famous minstrel troupe.

So in the end there’s no reason to think that Walter Ball’s first name was George or that he was ever called “the Georgia Rabbit,” and several good reasons to think that another player’s first name and nickname have been accidentally attached to Ball.

UPDATE See also this 1926 interview with Rube Foster where he confirms the separate existence of a Philadelphia Giants player named “Georgia Rabbit Washington.”

a proliferation of rubes

Waddell, Foster, DeGroff

A few months ago I finally found the long-sought game (suspected by some, including me, to be mythical) in which Andrew Foster pitched against, and defeated, Rube Waddell, thus earning the right to be called “Rube” himself.  This contest, with Foster hurling for the Cuban X-Giants and Waddell (under the pseudonym “Wilson”) for Nat Strong’s New York City semipro club, the Murray Hills, took place on August 2, 1903, at New York’s Olympia Field.

The other day John Thorn tipped me off about a sequel to this story (which he wrote about here).  Six weeks after the Murray Hills game, the X-Giants were barnstorming in upstate New York.  On September 21 (as John describes) they met the Kingston Colonials of the Hudson River League and edged them 3 to 2.  Foster was on the mound for the X-Giants. His opponent, the Kingston pitcher, was one Art DeGroff, who went on to a long career as a minor league outfielder and made some appearances in the big leagues with the Cardinals in 1905 and 1906.  “It may be coincidence,” John says, “but by the time [DeGroff] reached Rochester for the 1904 campaign, and forevermore thereafter, he too was known as ‘Rube’.”

So (perhaps) Foster beat Waddell to take the name Rube, then DeGroff came close to beating Foster to gain the nickname himself. Whatever the case with DeGroff, Waddell was the indisputable godfather of Rubes.  Richard Marquard, the third in the trinity of baseball’s most successful Rubes, also supposedly got his nickname because he reminded a minor league sportswriter of Waddell.

selling the negro leagues

Here is a passage from one of Ira Lewis’s “Passing Review” columns in the Pittsburgh Courier (September 11, 1926).  It’s a fascinating discussion of publicity strategies in black baseball.  The promoters and owners of clubs were often reluctant to hype their stars for fear of the individual players gaining too much bargaining power.  Lewis argues, however, that “smart management” recognizes the importance of making ballplayers into “box office attractions.”  The Homestead Grays, he says, finally broke through only when Cumberland Posey “got hep to the benefits of publicity and the wisdom of playing up his stars.”

Another takeaway from this piece: Lewis says of Joe Williams that “the Courier re-christened him from ‘Cyclone Joe’ Williams to ‘Smokey Joe’ Williams.”  So the change in nickname is confirmed as a conscious publicity strategy, apparently cooked up by the Courier in cahoots with Posey (who was himself a columnist for the Courier).

herrara, herrera

By the way: this guy (“Ramon Herrara”) is Ramón Herrera.  Herrera actually started the 1922 season on the Bridgeport Americans, also of the Eastern League, alongside Cuban Hall of Famer Joseíto Rodríguez, though it evidently didn’t show up in the guides.  He must have played very little with Bridgeport (fewer than ten games) before moving to Springfield.

Herrera and Claudio Manela thus joined the Eastern League from the Negro National League at the same time, though Manela didn’t stick.  Both were nicknamed “Mike,” for whatever reason.  (At least Mike González was actually named Miguel.)

Image of Herrera comes via Ryan Christoff’s Cuban Baseball Cards site.

cyclone joe vs. smokey joe

I know which side of this eternal struggle I’m on.  But to shed light on the issue of Joe Williams’s nicknames, I did a little lazy research (ProQuest searches) in three black newspapers to see how often each nickname showed up.

This is not in the least scientific or exhaustive.  I made no attempt to catch every possible permutation of Williams’s name—I just searched for “Cyclone Joe Williams,” on the one hand, and “Smokey Joe Williams” (as well as “Smoky Joe Williams,” the more common spelling early on) on the other.  Excluded are such forms as “Cyclone Williams,” or “Cyclone Joe” or “Smokey Joe” without “Williams” attached.  The point was just to get a quick sense of any patterns.

In the Chicago Defender, “Smokey/Smoky Joe Williams” came up a total of 78 times, to 30 for “Cyclone Joe Williams.”  The imbalance was more extreme in the Pittsburgh Courier, where Cyclone Joe, with 27 mentions, loses out to Smokey/Smoky Joe’s whopping 230 hits.  The third black paper I checked, the New York Amsterdam News, was actually the most even of the trio, preferring Smokey/Smokey Joe 32 to 19.

More illuminating than the raw totals is how the nicknames are distributed through the years.  Here’s the Defender, by decade:

1910s: Cyclone Joe 19, Smokey Joe 6
1920s: Cyclone Joe 7, Smokey Joe 14
1930s: Cyclone Joe 4, Smokey Joe 26
1940s: Cyclone Joe 0, Smokey Joe 7
1950s: Cyclone Joe 0, Smokey Joe 6
1960s: Cyclone Joe 0, Smokey Joe 8
1970s: Cyclone Joe 0, Smokey Joe 10

The Courier:
1920s: Cyclone Joe 17, Smokey Joe 112
1930s: Cyclone Joe 3, Smokey Joe 71
1940s: Cyclone Joe 2, Smokey Joe 15
1950s: Cyclone Joe 1, Smokey Joe 15
1960s: Cyclone Joe 1, Smokey Joe 5
1970s: Cyclone Joe 1, Smokey Joe 8
1980s: Cyclone Joe 0, Smokey Joe 4
1990s: Cyclone Joe 0, Smokey Joe 1

The Amsterdam News:
1920s: Cyclone Joe 5, Smokey Joe 7
1930s: Cyclone Joe 6, Smokey Joe 12
1940s: Cyclone Joe 4, Smokey Joe 7
1950s: Cyclone Joe 0, Smokey Joe 2
1960s: Cyclone Joe 2, Smokey Joe 0
1970s: Cyclone Joe 1, Smokey Joe 3
1980s: Cyclone Joe 1, Smokey Joe 0

Looking at the 1910s, the only instances of “Smokey Joe” occur in the Defender in 1918.  Interestingly, one story about how the nickname was coined says it happened in a game against the New York Giants in October 1917.  No further instances of “Smokey [or Smoky] Joe Williams” appear in the Defender until 1925. 

Both the Courier and the Amsterdam News are archived starting in 1923, so combining the three papers we get:

1923: Cyclone Joe 3, Smokey Joe 0
1924: Cyclone Joe 10, Smokey Joe 0
1925: Cyclone Joe 2, Smokey Joe 10
1926: Cyclone Joe 4, Smokey Joe 28
1927: Cyclone Joe 2, Smokey Joe 30
1928: Cyclone Joe 6, Smokey Joe 38
1929: Cyclone Joe 2, Smokey Joe 30

To sum up: Joe Williams pitched for the Lincoln Giants from 1911 to 1923, for the Brooklyn Royal Giants in 1924, and for the Homestead Grays starting in 1925.  When Williams came to work for the Grays, the Courier not only reported on him quite a bit more than it had, it started calling him Smokey Joe almost exclusively, and this seems to have driven the switch from the previously dominant Cyclone Joe.  However, the nickname was not coined at this time, as it had been used as early as 1918.

A few more random observations: a search of the New York Times turned up two instances of “Cyclone Joe Williams” in the 1910s, and no “Smokey Joe Williams” until 1972.  The Chicago Tribune shows eight mentions of “Cyclone Joe” in 1910 and 1911, and likewise no “Smokey Joe” until 1972.  The San Antonio Light called him “Cyclone Joe Williams” five times in 1907 and 1908, and never Smokey Joe.  And Williams was known exclusively as “Ciclón” in Cuba when he pitched there in the early 1910s.

There.  If I have caused the phrases “Smokey Joe” and “Cyclone Joe” to degenerate into meaningless strings of sound for you, then my job is done.

how cool papa got his name

John Holway’s Complete Book of Baseball’s Negro Leagues has the following about James Bell’s start in the Negro Leagues, and how he came to be called “Cool Papa”:

“St. Louis pitcher Fred ‘Lefty’ Bell got his kid brother, Jim, age 20, a job with the Stars as a knuckleball pitcher.  On the train to Chicago, the youngster showed no nervousness at the prospect of pitching against the great American Giants.  ‘That guy’s cool,’ the players said, and veteran pitcher Bill Gatewood handed him the nickname, ‘Cool Papa’ Bell.”

James Riley’s Biographical Encyclopedia, however, has this to say:

“[James Bell] was still a pitching prospect when he earned his nickname in 1922 by retaining his poise while striking out Oscar Charleston in a clutch situation.  His manager, Bill Gatewood, observed how ‘cool’ the nineteen-year-old had been under pressure and added the ‘Papa’ to make the name sound better.”

Riley repeats the story in the entry for Bill Gatewood.  Since he co-authored Cool Papa’s autobiography, I’d venture that he got the story straight from the source.  Whatever the case, since I’m currently working on the 1922 Negro National League season, I thought I’d check to see if I could find any evidence of either incident.

Riley and Holway agree on two things: the nickname was bestowed by Bill Gatewood, and it referred to Bell’s early career as a pitcher.

They disagree about chronology and about the role of Cool Papa’s brother, Fred.  Holway has Fred Bell preceding his brother on the St. Louis Stars, listing only Fred as a St. Louis pitcher in 1922.  He doesn’t show James with the Stars until 1923, when he lists both with the team.  Holway, then, would seem to be saying that James got his nickname in 1923.  Riley, on the other hand, has James starting with the Stars in 1922, and lists Fred with St. Louis only for 1923 and 1924. 

Other sources agree with Riley.  Clark and Lester’s Negro Leagues Book lists only James Bell as a St. Louis pitcher in 1922.  And Patrick Rock 1923 Negro National League Yearbook shows that Fred Bell actually started 1923 with Toledo, and only came to St. Louis with several other players when that team folded.

The whereabouts of Bill Gatewood also support the idea of Cool Papa’s rookie season being 1922.  While Gatewood managed St. Louis during 1922, every source I’ve seen has him with Toledo (where he played alongside Fred) and Milwaukee in 1923.  Gatewood would return to St. Louis in 1924, which was when (according to Patrick) he taught Cool Papa to switch-hit—but that was not only (almost certainly) Bell’s third season, it was also the year he moved to the outfield due to an arm injury (Holway only has him going 3-1 on the mound).  It seems unlikely 1) that striking out Charleston or not being nervous about facing the American Giants (by then no longer the perennial champs) would have been considered a big deal for a pitcher with a couple of seasons under his belt; or 2) that Bell would have been given a nickname for his pitching just as he was giving it up.

So, based on published research, Holway would appear to be wrong on these related counts: James, not Fred, pitched for St. Louis in 1922; Fred very likely was not responsible for getting his brother a job with the Stars; and the nickname “Cool Papa” probably dates from 1922, not 1923.

Now, here’s what I’ve found so far in my work on 1922: I’m pretty sure only one Bell played for St. Louis that year—at any rate, two Bells never appeared in the lineup at the same time.  I have yet to find anything in newspapers that identifies this Bell (not even a first initial), or in fact discusses him at all.  In an April 15 article about the Stars, the Chicago Defender lists five pitchers:  Bill Drake, Jimmy Oldham, John Finner, Deacon Meyers, and manager Bill Gatewood.  A “Bell” isn’t mentioned. 

However: on April 30 the Stars played the East St. Louis Cubs, a local black team, beating them 9 to 1.  “Bell” was the losing pitcher for the Cubs, and another Bell played left field.  Here’s the box score from the May 6 Chicago Defender:

It seems likely that these are the two Bell brothers, Fred and James, though which one pitched is anybody’s guess.  Within a few days, the Stars left for an NNL-season-opening series at Indianapolis, and one of the Bells, most likely James, left with them; and on May 9, “Bell” relieved Deacon Meyers in the middle of an 11-5 loss.  This is the box score, from the May 10 Indianapolis Star: 

Was this Cool Papa Bell’s first Negro League appearance?  Based on everything we know, it almost certainly was.  Interestingly, he would have faced Oscar Charleston, the man he supposedly struck out in a clutch situation to earn his nickname.  Unfortunately, neither of the two box scores I have for this game break down pitchers’ innings, so his exact performance isn’t (so far) knowable. It’s worth noting that Bell did have three strikeouts.  It’s conceivable he entered the game with runners on and Charleston up, and struck him out.

At any rate Bell impressed Gatewood enough that on May 15, he made his second NNL appearance, this time starting the game—against none other than the Chicago American Giants, in Chicago:

(Sorry, I photocopied this box score in two pieces...)

That Bell won his very first NNL start on the road against the American Giants in 1922 certainly backs up Holway’s story.  And Riley’s is also supported (though not as strongly) by the facts as we know them.  So, as far as I can tell, both stories about how Cool Papa Bell got his name could well be true.

that's cyclone joe to you

One thing I wanted to say about Joe Williams: during his prime (and after), he was known exclusively as Cyclone Joe Williams, not Smokey Joe.  I’m not sure when “Smokey Joe” became the preferred usage, but I’m certain I’ve never seen it in newspapers before the mid-1920s, when Williams was around 40 and, while still good, well past his prime.  He was so well-known by the other nickname that he sometimes appeared in box scores simply as Cyclone.

I don’t know which one Williams preferred, but I like Cyclone, for three main reasons: 1) he was known as Cyclone for the bulk of his active career, and when he was at his greatest; 2) to avoid duplication with another great pitcher and contemporary, Smokey Joe Wood, hero of the 1912 Red Sox; and 3) because of an irritating story that’s often told to explain the origin of the “Smokey Joe” nickname. 

There are several stories about how Joe Williams came to be called “Smokey”:

1) It was given to him after his famous 1930 night-game duel with Chet Brewer under the Monarchs’ dim portable lights, when Williams struck out 27 in 12 innings.  I've never really understood why this would suggest “Smokey” in particular, as opposed to anything else.

2) It came from Pittsburgh (the Smokey City), where the Homestead Grays played.  This is plausible, because as far as I know, the nickname does begin to appear around the time he joined the Grays (1925).

3) He was named after Smokey Joe Wood. This is also plausible, especially given that in late October, 1912, Williams shut out the New York Giants on four hits—and the Giants had just lost the World Series to Wood's Red Sox, with Wood winning three games.  It might make sense that a journalist or observer or opponent compared Williams to Wood.  Similar nickname liftings happened with other players, notably Rube Foster (supposedly named after Rube Waddell, although Rube was a pretty common nickname at the turn of the century) and Bullet Joe Rogan (named after Bullet Joe Bush).  Phil Dixon, Rogan’s biographer, has reported that within the black community and Negro League circles, Rogan was known simply as Bullet Rogan (or, as I’ve seen occasionally, Bullets), until white newspapers in Kansas City casually christened him “Bullet Joe.” 

Dixon finds this inherently condescending, indeed racist (he doesn't use the word, but he implies it pretty strongly); I agree.  It’s a little like calling Oscar Charleston “the black Ty Cobb,” or Josh Gibson “the black Babe Ruth”—it robs real, complex human beings of their own identities and dramas, reducing them to mere imitations of white patterns.  In most cases it also completely misrepresents the black player.  Of course, it’s more complicated than that; in the course of time, some black players came to own the nicknames they shared with white players.  Nobody remembers that there was a white Rube Foster, for instance, and it’s Smokey Joe Williams in the Hall of Fame, not Smokey Joe Wood.

One funny thing about Rogan: his nickname resulted in a sort of back formation, whereby he’s often now referred to as “Joe Rogan.”  His given first name was Charles, and he went by his middle name, Wilber.  I wonder if this happened to Rogan in real life—if people got used to calling him “Bullet Joe,” then started referring to him as “Joe”? (EDIT--Dixon actually says that two KC (white) dailies, the Journal and the Times, started calling him Joe before the "Bullet Joe" nickname took hold.)

Anyway, back to Williams.  The last story about the origin of “Smokey Joe,” and the one that really bugs me, is this:

4) That, after pitching a no-hitter and striking out 20 New York Giants in 1917, but losing on an error, Giants’ outfielder Ross Youngs came up to Williams and said, “That was a hell of a game, Smokey!”  To my knowledge, this game has never been found in the contemporary press.  According to John Holway, this story was told by Oscar Owens, a longtime Homestead Grays’ pitcher, in the 1945 Negro Baseball Annual.  He doesn’t say whether Owens claims to have witnessed the game (and incident) or not.  I don’t have a birth date for Owens, but James Riley’s Biographical Encyclopedia does have him playing as early as 1913. Owens spent most of his baseball career in Pittsburgh, though, while Williams in 1917 was playing for the Lincoln Giants of New York.

What bugs me is that Owens apparently thought Williams needed the stamp of approval of a big league star in order to be considered legitimate.  Every time somebody retells the story uncritically, it just reinforces the idea.  That’s bad enough, in my opinion; but consider that Youngs, far from being a star in 1917, was a 20-year-old rookie who had just debuted on September 25 (the Lincolns/Giants game, if it occurred, took place in October, presumably after the World Series).  Williams was a 31-year-old veteran, the playing manager of the one of the best teams outside Organized Baseball, and one of the best pitchers on the planet. 

Calling him “Smokey Joe” grants too much credence and honor to this weird mythic scene in which the white rookie condescends to the black superstar, conferring on him a name that trumps the identity the superstar had already spent a decade building up.  Holway, as it happens, more than once reports that upon coming north in 1910, Williams told people to call him Cyclone.  We should honor that wish today.