Doc Amole

In August 1897, the Baltimore Orioles called up left-hander Morris “Doc” Amole to fortify the club’s pitching staff for a late-season National League pennant run. In spot starter/relief duty, Amole pitched creditably, posting a 4-4 record, with a 2.57 ERA in 11 games. He was traded to Washington in the offseason and big things were expected of the young hurler, but he failed miserably. After going 0-6 in seven games, Amole was unconditionally released. He spent most of the remainder of his career pitching in high minor leagues with mixed results, highlighted by the April 1900 no-hitter that he pitched in the very first game played in the new American (nee Western) League. Despite that gem, Amole never received another major-league chance. Doc was only several years removed from a final pitching comeback try when he was found dead in his room at a Wilmington, Delaware, boarding house on March 9, 1912. He was only 38.

Some four decades later the first edition of a groundbreaking baseball encyclopedia authored by Hy Turkin and S.C. Thompson was published.1 Unhappily, certain player biographical entries contained in Turkin and Thompson have proved historically unreliable, if not flat-out wrong.2 Such is the case with Doc Amole, for whom the following data were provided: Name – Morris George (Doc) Amole; Date of birth – July 5, 1878; Place of birth – Coatesville, Pennsylvania; Date of death – March 7, 1912. With the exception of the erroneous date of death (corrected to March 9, 1912), Turkin and Thompson biographical information for Amole was republished in the Macmillan/Reichler baseball encyclopedia, Total Baseball, and other print successors to Turkin and Thompson. Thereafter, it was adopted by Baseball-Reference, Baseball Almanac, SABR Encyclopedia, and other electronic baseball reference works. Based upon review of more than 2,000 box scores, line scores, and news articles mentioning Amole, official government records pertaining to him, and Amole-related material archived by the Chester County (Pennsylvania) Historical Society, it seems clear that the biographical data for Amole presented in baseball reference works were/are incorrect. The process of correcting the record on Amole is currently in progress. Meanwhile, the ensuing narrative, in addition to providing an account of the life of Doc Amole, will endeavor to substantiate the needed revisions to his biographical profile.3

The surname Amole (pronounced: ah-MOH-lee) is generally German or Alsatian in origin and relatively common in southeastern Pennsylvania. Doc’s forbears predate the Revolutionary War and were mostly Pennsylvania farmers. Morris F. Amole was born in or around Coatesville, a Chester County ironworks town about 40 miles west of Philadelphia. Although some contemporary sources maintain that Amole was born in 1870, his most likely date of birth is January 1, 1874.4 Morris was the second of at least eight children born to wheelwright Henry J. Amole (1845-1922) and his wife, Orbena Elizabeth Amole (1851-1908),5 and called Doc from boyhood.6 By 1880 the Amole family had moved to nearby Springfield, but eight years later, local directories listed Doc and his older brother William as living together in Coatesville and working as brickmakers.7 Amole began playing baseball as a youngster, and by age 17 he was a left-handed pitcher/righty-batting outfielder for the semipro Coatesville Stars. A locally published October 1891 box score memorializes an 8-5 Stars win over the West Chester High School nine in which Amole recorded seven strikeouts.8 Doc was re-engaged by the Coatesville Stars for the 1892 season9 but his name does not appear in any of the available Stars box scores. At 1892 season’s end, the Stars disbanded.10

For the next three years, Amole played for a Coatesville nine in the Chester County League. On occasion he also pitched for the Coatesville YMCA team.11 In November 1895 Doc took on domestic responsibilities, marrying a 22-year-old widow named Mary Ellis. He entered professional baseball ranks the following February, signing with the Wilmington Peaches of the Atlantic League12 and taking up local residence.13 The highlight – perhaps apocryphal – of the 1896 Wilmington season occurred during the night half of a Fourth of July doubleheader against Paterson. In the fourth inning, Amole reportedly slipped a firecracker into the ball and then pitched it to an unsuspecting Sam McMackin, the Paterson pitcher. The firecracker exploded upon contact with McMackin’s bat, startling spectators with a loud bang and leaving the bat shattered in McMackin’s hands. The prank, alas, was not appreciated, prompting the umpire to call an immediate end to the game.14 Such an abbreviated pitching performance was a rarity for Amole that season. He finished 43 of his 47 starts. At 5-feet-9 and 170 pounds, Doc was sturdily built but ill-prepared for the punishing workload that Peaches manager Denny Long would subject him to. In 417 innings pitched, Doc went 22-24, with a fine 2.54 ERA for a seventh-place (58-79) Wilmington club. That maiden pro season, however, took its toll on his pitching arm. Thereafter, Amole, originally a hard thrower, relied mainly on slow stuff, a deceptive side-arm delivery, and an exceptional pickoff move to first.

At the close of the 1896 campaign, Baltimore manager Ned Hanlon drafted Amole, paying Wilmington $500 for his contract rights.15 With competition from young guns like Joe Corbett, Bill Hoffer, Arlie Pond, and fellow Wilmington graduate Jerry Nops, Amole found himself the odd man out in the Orioles’ 1897 pitching plans. Hanlon therefore optioned him to the Reading Coal Heavers of the Atlantic League, reuniting Amole with new Reading manager Denny Long. Again, Long subjected Amole to overuse, once having him pitch (and win) both ends of a June doubleheader. By early August, Amole had already racked up 277 innings pitched, going 12-12, with a sparkling 1.75 ERA for a dreadful Coal Heavers club headed for a last place (40-100) finish. Meanwhile back in Baltimore, Hanlon’s Orioles were locked in a tight battle with Boston Beaneaters for the National League pennant and in need of additional pitching.

On August 19, 1897, 23-year-old call-up Doc Amole made his major-league debut, starting for Baltimore against the Cleveland Spiders and Cy Young. Amole lost 3-0 but turned in an able complete-game performance, spacing six hits and striking out three, only to be undone by Orioles fielding. All three Spiders’ runs were unearned. Eight days later, Doc notched his first win, a route-going 5-3 victory over Cincinnati. In all, Amole appeared in 11 games for Baltimore, posting a 4-4 record with a 2.57 ERA in 70 innings pitched. He struck out 19, walked 17, and confined opposing batsmen to a .250 batting average. Baltimore (90-40) finished a close second to the pennant-winning (93-39) Beaneaters, with the two clubs then squaring off for the postseason Temple Cup match. Although Corbett, Hoffer, and Nops were hit with regularity by Boston batsmen, manager Hanlon declined to use a fourth arm in the series, relying upon future Hall of Famers Willie Keeler, Hugh Jennings, Joe Kelley, John McGraw, and Wilbert Robinson to inflict even greater damage on the enemy pitching corps. The strategy prevailed, as Baltimore captured the Cup in five high-scoring games, 4 to 1. Despite having been with the club for little more than one month and no more than a bench warmer during postseason play, Amole was awarded a full $310 Cup victors’ share,16 a seeming down payment on sterling performances expected of him in future.

Awaiting the 1898 campaign, Amole returned to Coatesville, where he worked in the offseason as a carpenter. But his baseball future did not reside with the Baltimore Orioles. In December 1897, manager Hanlon included Amole in a six-player trade that shipped him to Washington – essentially in exchange for another Doc, curveballing right-hander James “Doc” McJames. Hanlon expressed reluctance in parting with Amole, whom he held in high regard, but felt the need to include him in the trade as a deal sweetener. As for the merits of the exchanged Docs, Hanlon’s sentiments were clear. “I don’t think there is the least doubt that Baltimore is getting an erratic twirler (McJames) for a first-class man (Amole). The two are not equal, by any means.”17 Hanlon was an astute club leader, headed for an eventual berth in the Hall of Fame. But he could not have been more wrong regarding McJames and Amole.

Amole got off on the wrong foot with his new club, refusing to accept Washington’s contract terms until early April. Still, he was given the honor of being the Senators’ starting pitcher in the 1898 home opener. Facing his old mates from Baltimore, Amole pitched poorly and was further hampered by inept Washington defensive work behind him. Final score: Baltimore 9, Washington 0. In the succeeding weeks, the situation did not improve. After losing several more starts, Amole was removed from the rotation. He fared no better in relief. Called upon to protect an 8-4 ninth-inning Washington lead, he promptly surrendered six runs to Brooklyn in a game lost 10-9. Four days later, two ninth-inning runs yielded by Amole spelled the difference in a 6-4 loss to Philadelphia. Describing Doc’s work as “a dismal failure,” Sporting Life was soon reporting that Amole had been left behind to work out on his own as Washington departed for a Western road trip in late May.18 Ominously, Amole was cited as being “in poor condition,” often a euphemism for a drinking problem. Behind the scenes, Washington brass offered Amole to NL rivals like Chicago and New York, but found no takers. On June 4, with the Amole log standing at 0-6, with a bloated 7.84 ERA, the club gave him his unconditional release. Doc McJames, meanwhile, had emerged as the Baltimore ace, and was then nearing the midway point of a superb 27-15/2.36 ERA season.

Although he was only 24 years old, Doc Amole’s time as a major-league pitcher was over. In 18 games over parts of two seasons, he had gone 4-10, with a 4.75 ERA in 119? innings pitched. Control problems were reflected in the 39 walks and 12 hit batsmen charged to Amole over that span, while he had struck out only 30. Refused a sought-after second chance by Washington club owner Earl Wagner, Amole made employment inquiries in the Eastern League. Initially, it was reported that Amole was likely to join the Springfield Ponies, but negotiations stalled over contract terms.19 Instead, Amole signed with the Buffalo Bisons.20 Given regular work for the remainder of the season, Amole posted an 11-11 mark for Buffalo, his performance about on par with the 62-60 record of the Bisons for the 1898 season. But an impressive 202 innings worked secured Amole a job for the following year, as Buffalo placed him on the club’s reserved list for 1899.21

Although press reports were cryptically worded, Amole’s drinking apparently became a greater problem in 1899. Prior to the season, he was arrested by a Baltimore policeman for disorderly conduct on a public street. As described by the Washington Post, “While the officer was in the act of clapping the cuffs on the little German twirler’s wrists, Amole fractured the balk rule by crossing the blue coat with a tattoo of persuaders on the jaw point.”22 Once released from custody, Amole reported to Buffalo and assumed a spot in the Bisons’ rotation until early July, when he and batterymate Bill Diggins were fined $25 each “for keeping late hours.” Their defense was that manager Dan Shannon “did not set a good example.”23 Days thereafter, Buffalo released Amole. By mid-August, Doc was pitching for a semipro team in Erie, Pennsylvania,24 but at season’s end, Amole was back in a Buffalo Bisons uniform.25 His pitching record for the seventh place (53-70) Bisons was a bifurcated 8-11.26

In 1900 Western League President Ban Johnson placed teams in Chicago and Cleveland and laid the other groundwork needed for his circuit to assume major-league status shortly. This included abandoning the regional Western League moniker and assuming a new name of larger scope: the American League. In so doing, Johnson incidentally created the circumstances required for Doc Amole to make some baseball history. Although he was reportedly headed for Minneapolis for the 1900 season,27 Amole remained with the Buffalo Bisons and was handed the ball on Opening Day. With inclement weather forcing the cancellation of games scheduled in the East, the April 19, 1900, Buffalo-at-Detroit game would become the first ever played in the new, but still minor, American League. As was frequently the case, Doc had excellent stuff but command problems that day. On several occasions, Amole walks, hit batsmen, and wild pitches put Detroit runners in scoring position, but Doc managed to put down such threats without yielding a run. As the innings passed, the crowd of 5,000 began to take notice of the fact that Detroit had not yet managed a base hit off Amole. Meanwhile, Buffalo took advantage of timely hitting of its own and Detroit fielding lapses to send Doc into the ninth with a comfortable 8-0 lead. Three outs later, Doc Amole had inaugurated American League play by throwing a no-hitter.28

Amole’s next outing, four days later, was a different story. He was hit freely by the Indianapolis Hoosiers and absorbed a 7-1 setback. A pattern for the 1900 Amole season had been set, with sharp performances alternating with dismal ones. In his next appearance against Indianapolis, for example, Doc threw a three-hit shutout (albeit with 11 walks), while in June the same Detroit team that Amole had no-hit two months earlier pounded him 21-9. All the while, the sporting press cautioned about the need for Amole to refrain from indulging unmentioned weaknesses. According to one syndicated baseball column, Amole’s “usefulness ceases the minute he returns to old habits,”29 while another declared that “if Amole keeps himself in condition, he is a winner.”30 Whatever his condition, Amole turned in yeoman work for a noncontending (61-78, seventh-place) Buffalo team. He posted a 22-22 record31 for a team whose number-two starter (Dan Kerwin) won only 12 games. In 342 innings pitched, Amole surrendered 350 hits, striking out 100 batters but walking 115. Doc was hopeful that such work had earned him another big-league shot, and one press report had him headed to Brooklyn in 1901.32 But Amole remained on the Buffalo reserve list, and his chances for reacquiring major-league status – and that of his club, as well – were dashed when Buffalo was jettisoned as an American League franchise and relegated to the Eastern League, a Class A minor league, for the 1901 season.

The 1901 season was a trying one for Amole. He pitched often, but with little success. By midseason a mean-spirited piece in the Worcester Daily Spy declared, “Doc Amole is neither handsome nor effective. Doc is one of those Eastern League pitchers who prays for good luck. In baseball parlance, Doc is ‘all in’ as a twirler.”33 Three weeks later, Buffalo gave Amole the obligatory three days’ notice of his release. Doc responded with a three-hit victory over the Brockton B’s, and Buffalo promptly rescinded the release notice.34 He finished the season with a disheartening 11-25 record for yet another lousy (40-73) Buffalo club.35 After the season ended, Amole’s fortunes did not change. He was stricken with appendicitis, a life-threatening malady at the turn of the century. Happily, Doc weathered risky surgery and was recovering at his new residence in Buffalo by early in the new year.36

Amole’s standing revived the following season, and his pitching drew some favorable notice. The Pawtucket Times, for example, described him as “the best sidewheeler in the league.”37 Even the Worchester Daily Spy had kind words: “The twirling of Amole has been wonderful.”38 But in truth, increasing age, an abused left arm, and the effects of overindulgence had reduced Amole to a minor-league journeyman, effective only when consigned to a reduced role on the Buffalo staff. Still, Amole was useful in spots, going 14-12 for a suddenly outstanding (88-45) Bisons club that fell only percentage points from the Eastern League crown. In the offseason, Amole decided to tempt fate and took a job at a local hotel-saloon. Once they found out, dismayed Buffalo club owners promptly released him.39 By March, however, Amole was back in the Buffalo fold – but only after he had given up his post behind the bar.40 But he would not see the season through with the Bisons. In July Buffalo suspended Amole indefinitely, commanding that he take daily walks and otherwise work out until he “regain[ed] the form expected.”41 Weeks later, he was traded to an Eastern League rival, the Providence Grays, with whom he finished the season. For the year, Doc went 8-10 between the two clubs.

That winter Amole returned to Buffalo and resumed work as a “mixologist.”42 Notwithstanding that provocation, the pitching-strapped Providence Grays re-signed him for the coming season. He lasted until August, drawing his release after logging an 8-11 record. Doc finished the 1904 season pitching for the New Bedford Whalers of the Class B New England League.43 That Amole appreciated that his time in baseball was running short is reflected in the Buffalo City Directory. In years past, he always had himself listed as a “ballplayer.” In 1905, however, he appeared as: Morris F. Amole, 1029 Michigan Street, carpenter. Still, Doc wanted to extend his playing career a bit longer. After an overture to the Eastern League Newark Sailors had been rebuffed, Amole hooked on with clubs in the Class B New York State League. In rapid succession, he pitched briefly and was then released by Syracuse, Utica, and Scranton. By August he was pitching for a semipro team in Plattsburgh, New York.44 Amole’s last professional hurrah came in the Tri-State League, a low-level independent minor league centered in Pennsylvania. He drew his final release after going 0-3 in early going for the cellar-dwelling Johnstown Johnnies.45 Doc Amole then came full circle, pitching his last competitive ball in the Chester County League, the semipro circuit where he had gotten his start some 15 years earlier.46

By now Amole had departed Buffalo, leaving behind one Magdalena (Lena) Amole, a woman who would later inform local authorities that she was the widow of Morris Amole.47 In March 1909 Doc resurfaced in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, informing various newspapers that he was assaying a pitching comeback with the Williamsport club in the Tri-State League.48 Nothing came of it. A year later, the 1910 US Census and Pennsylvania Miracode Index placed Morris Amole, single, age 36, living as a boarder in the Halwell family residence in Hazle Township. Sometime thereafter, he apparently left for Wilmington, Delaware, in search of work.49

Beginning in July 1911, events facially unrelated to the life of Doc Amole began appearing in newsprint: the investigation, arrest, indictment, trial, and conviction of one George C. Amole, a clerk in the office of the Atlantic City (New Jersey) comptroller. Amole and others were snared in a political corruption/election fraud probe that garnered nationwide press attention. And the January 1912 prison sentence imposed on George Amole was reported from Philadelphia to Boise, and most places in between.50

On March 9, 1912, Doc Amole was found dead on the floor of his room at a Wilmington boarding house. The cause of death was officially determined to be “congestion of the lungs.”51 Although the deceased was properly identified as Morris F. Amole by Delaware authorities, press accounts of his passing replaced Doc’s first name with that of the Amole who had recently been in the news. Most newspapers published a variant of the following: “George Amole, better known as ‘Doc’ Amole, formerly pitcher for Baltimore, Buffalo and Providence … was found dead at his boarding house in Wilmington, Del., Saturday.”52 Some 40 years later, the first edition of the Turkin and Thompson baseball encyclopedia confused the matter further, giving Amole’s name as: Morris George (Doc) Amole, a name nowhere found in the historical record. Turkin and Thompson simultaneously published another novel Amole biographical datum: a July 5, 1878, date of birth. This date has an untraceable provenance and utterly no support in the historical record, and bears all the hallmarks of pure invention. Regrettably, the Morris George Amole/July 5, 1878, identifiers for Doc Amole were adopted – apparently uncritically – by both the print and electronic successors to Turkin and Thompson, including Macmillan, Total Baseball, Baseball-Reference, Baseball Almanac, and the SABR Encyclopedia. Relying upon these reputable reference works, much that has been written about Amole in recent years – that he was only 19 years old when he made his major-league debut; that he was the youngest player in the National League during the 1897 and 1898 seasons; that he was only 33 when he died – is incorrect. Meanwhile, the process of correcting the Amole vital stats is currently in progress, with the SABR Biographical Committee having already amended its entry on Amole.

After Morris F. “Doc” Amole died, his body was returned to Coatesville and buried there in Fairview Cemetery. No memorial marks his final resting place. Given that a century has now elapsed since he passed on, the now ongoing correction of the inaccurate biographical data long presented by baseball references seems a fitting substitute to a headstone for Doc Amole.

The writer is indebted to baseball historian Peter Morris and photo archivist Pamela C. Powell of the Chester County Historical Society for their assistance in researching the life of Doc Amole.

Notes