Felix Chouinard

A baseball journeyman who never found a permanent team or position, whose name few fans even knew how to pronounce, Felix “Phil” Chouinard performed for 18 seasons in big cities and small towns, mostly in the Midwest. He earned most praise, however, as player-manager of a United States Navy team during World War I.

Felix G. Chouinard was born in Chicago on October 5, 1887, the second son and youngest of four siblings. His father, Archibald “Archie” Chouinard, was a French-Canadian upholsterer and cabinet maker who’d emigrated to America in 1877 and become a citizen 15 years later. Archie’s wife, the former Ellen Finney, was a homemaker and first-generation Illinoisan of Irish parentage.

Nothing is known of Felix’s childhood. His nickname “Phil” was common for boys with his first name. After high school he attended St. Ignatius College in Chicago, today Loyola University, where he was versatile on the diamond. “Chouinard was too valuable a fielder to be spared often from shortstop and the outfield but his box [pitching] record is nearly perfect: six victories and one defeat,” a school magazine said in 1906.1 The ballplayer threw and generally batted right-handed. He was also an actor and singer who starred in campus productions.

After graduating from St. Ignatius, Chouinard spent most of summer 1908 playing semipro ball in Chicago, including with Cap Anson’s Colts, before breaking into the professional ranks that August with the Des Moines Boosters of the Class A Western League. A local newspaper said Chouinard made “an exceedingly good impression” during his debut. “He fielded the position in faultless style and got a hit.”2 But he was prone to errors and hit only .203 during 32 games.

The Des Moines club planned to use Chouinard in the infield the following season, and he did play several spring games with the Boosters. “Little Chouinard will play second,” a paper said. “He is a natural ball player and if he does not find a berth with the Des Moines team will undoubtedly land in a good place somewhere else.”3

The prediction was accurate. Given his release before opening day, Chouinard moved down to Class D to the Green Bay Bays in the Wisconsin-Illinois League (W-I). Fans called the team the Kids. Chouinard played a little infield but mostly took a position in the outer gardens.

He was small for an outfielder at five-feet-seven and 150 pounds but compensated through his ability to cover ground quickly. Chouinard was “keeping up his fast work in the center garden,” a Green Bay scribe wrote in August. “He is without a doubt the best outfielder in the league. He has a nice whip too.”4

The Chicagoan finished the 1909 campaign batting .265 over 122 games. He returned the following year to Green Bay, which was now one rung higher on the professional ladder, the W-I circuit having risen to Class C during the offseason.

Major League scouts noticed Chouinard, the Bay captain under manager and former big leaguer John “Jack” Pickett. Chicago   White Sox owner Charles Comiskey acquired his contract in September 1910. Chouinard reported to the White Sox following the Bays’ season, during which he hit .289 in 112 games. He made his big-league debut in his hometown on September 11 in a 2–0 loss to the Detroit Tigers.

White Sox skipper Hugh Duffy knew nothing about his rookie except that Bays manager Pickett had accompanied him to the game. The next day sportswriter Ring Lardner Sr. told his Chicago Tribune readers that the name of the stranger playing left field was Felix Chouinard. “Pronounce that any way you like,” he wrote. “In center there was [Edward “Dutch”] Zwilling and in right Paul] Meloan. The outfield therefore represented just about every nation but Persia.”5

“The addition of Mr. Felix Chouinard rounds out the polyglot cuisine at Mr. Comiskey’s ballpark, lending the missing dash of mayonnaise, as it were,” fellow Tribune columnist Hugh Edmund Keough later added. Keough also clued fans in on pronouncing the rookie’s name: “Shinard—quick, just like that, and the CH soft as asparagus.”6

Chouinard went hitless during his first game but dazzled in the field, showing “fleetness of foot and strength of arm,” the Tribune said. “He made two throws that were beauts, one of them scaring a Detroit runner back to third base on a medium sized fly. He appears to peg without any special effort.”7

The rookie soon demonstrated his speed as well, dashing home to score during a 4–3 victory September 17 over the Red Sox at Comiskey Park. The theft was part of a triple steal off the battery of Ed Karger and Bill Carrigan. “It was a nice bit of work,” Lardner reported, “and made the young Frenchman more solid than ever with south siders.”8 The Green Bay Gazette added that Chouinard “seems to be the most promising of any of Comiskey’s recruits.”9

Chouinard showed off his arm during Chicago’s penultimate game, versus Detroit at home. Tiger shortstop Donie Bush stood crouched at third as Chouinard fielded a long fly ball to center. “Bush thought he could score easily in spite of his bum wheel, not expecting Chouinard even to try to throw,” Tribune sportswriter I. E. Sanborn wrote. “Felix did, and not only tried it but sailed the ball on the fly straight into [catcher James “Bruno”] Block’s hands, a step ahead of Bush, completing the shutout.”10

The 4–0 win secured sixth place for the struggling White Sox in the American League standings. The little Chicagoan’s batting, however, didn’t match his running or fielding. He hit only .195 during 24 games but was nonetheless retained for 1911.

“One of the surprises was the order for Felix Chouinard to be switched to the regulars for the remaining games of the training schedule,” the Chicago Daily News said during spring training. “Chouinard is regarded one of the best fielders in the American league,” it added. “It is doubtful whether Ty] Cobb or Tris] Speaker can excel him in the fielding department of the game.”11

Chouinard stayed with the club all season despite seeing little action. He received unwanted attention for a pinch-running embarrassment September 1 at home versus the Naps (Indians).

“Cleveland worked the hidden ball play on the White Sox in the ninth inning, thereby saving the game for them,” the Daily News explained. “Chouinard was caught napping off second, being tagged by [shortstop Ivan “Ivy”] Olson, Chouinard thinking the pitcher had the ball. This was the first time this fake play has been pulled off on the White Sox in Chicago.”12

Chouinard didn’t respond well. “Felix is ordinarily a well mannered sort of fellow, but that was too much for him,” Cleveland skipper George Stovall said.13 Olson told Ring Lardner Sr. years later that “the papers said one bonehead had been outboned by another.”14

I.E. Sanborn in the Tribune blamed the whole Sox team for ignoring the game while watching the scoreboard to see what the Cubs were doing that day. The hoary trick play, he wrote, “worked so perfectly that everybody, including the Sox coachers, went to sleep on it, and Chouinard was tagged almost standing still many feet off second base.”15

The utility man probably knew he wouldn’t return to the White Sox in 1912. Chouinard had begun a second career in vaudeville by the time Chicago sold him back to Des Moines in January. The Detroit Times said his Garden City Trio “presents a rapid-fire comedy turn with music, featuring a brand new song, ‘Remember Me To My Old Gal,’ the words of which were written by George Moriarty, of the Tigers.” The paper added that the trio “scored a big hit with the song” at Detroit’s Miles Theater.16

The former Chicago player “appears to be quite as much at home on the stage as he is upon the ball field,” a Green Bay paper said when the group later played the Crystal Theater at Milwaukee. “Chouinard leaves most of the comedy work to his partners, but he is handy with his lines and sings in a smooth, sweet voice.”17

Catastrophe then struck as spring training neared. “Word was received in an indirect way yesterday that Felix Chouinard, the outfielder acquired from Comiskey, is ill at his home in Chicago with typhoid-malaria and will not likely be able to report to the club this year,” the Des Moines Register reported in mid-March.18 Other papers called his sickness typhoid fever or typhoid pneumonia.

Chouinard hadn’t fully recovered by June when he signed with the Menominee (Michigan) club in the independent Upper Peninsula-Wisconsin League. “It was believed by his physician that he could play twice a week, and negotiations resulted in his being signed for Menominee,” a Green Bay paper said.19

He briefly played in center field for Menominee before his salary proved too much for the new, cash-strapped club, which soon dropped out of the league. Chouinard reported to Des Moines in early August, but his poor health meant he was not able to stick, and his release came before the end of the month. He went home to Chicago.

The start of Chouinard’s 1913 season was chaotic. He played at least one exhibition game for the Chicago Keeleys in the still independent Federal League. His contract then briefly belonged to both the Class A Chattanooga Lookouts and again the Des Moines club, although he didn’t play for either.

He settled finally again at Green Bay. The Bays used him mostly in the outfield but occasionally in the infield, plus once as temporary manager and once on the mound. “As a pitcher Mr. Chouinard is a good outfielder,” an Illinois sports page quipped.20

Injured for part of the season, Chouinard hit an unspectacular .252 during 119 games. He said afterward that he was through with baseball but didn’t mean it. By early in the new year Chouinard was dickering for a spot in the Federal League, then emerging as the third major circuit elbowing for space with the National and American Leagues.

Sanborn reported in the Chicago Tribune during January 1914 that Chouinard was talking with manager Joe Tinker of the local Chi-Feds. “It has been erroneously stated that he [Chouinard] is under reservation to the White Sox,” the scribe added. “Comiskey’s claim to the outfielder expired some seasons ago, and he is not barred from consideration by the north side club.”21

The 1914 season proved almost as confusing as a year earlier. Chouinard began with the Brooklyn Tip-Tips, not Chicago. Then in June the Brooklyn club loaned him for two weeks to the Pittsburgh Rebels, “to help out while several members of the team were on the hospital list.”22 He hit his only big league homer June 16 batting for the Rebels at Weeghman Park in Chicago. It came during the seventh inning versus Chifeds southpaw Charles “Doc” Watson.

“Felix was first up and he poked one over first base,” the Chicago Tribune said. “It was a double all right, because Al] Wickland couldn’t head it off, but the ball rolled away down in the right field corner and hopped through a picket fence.”23 Ground rules said it was a home run, which tied the score, 1–1, until Pittsburgh won 4–3 in the tenth inning.

Chouinard played in nine games over nine days for the Rebels before returning to the Tip-Tops. Brooklyn then quickly loaned him out again, to the Baltimore Terrapins, with whom he spent a month as a left-handed emergency hitter. By mid-August Chouinard was back again in Brooklyn.

“As he is both a fast, clever, fielder and an excellent hitter, he’ll be a handy man when needed,” the Brooklyn Times said of the well-traveled journeyman.24 He didn’t play much but was effective when he did, batting .380. when he returned to Brooklyn in August. For the season overall he hit .280.

Chouinard was “one of those wise boys who takes a real interest in his work,” the Brooklyn Eagle said. “He can bat either right-handed or left-handed and when he found out that a southpaw would probably labor for St. Louis on Saturday he took [Harry] Juul over to an unoccupied section of the outfield and there practiced hitting right-handed for half an hour with Juul tossing the ball to him.”25 Chouinard then went two-for-two during the game.

He returned to vaudeville following the season together with teammate Steve Evans and Brooklyn prospect Jack Conway, who’d accompanied the club during the spring. Show business bible Variety identified New York Evening Mail sportswriter Grantland Rice as the author of their materials. The Eagle found “no reason in the world” why the Brookfed Trio shouldn’t succeed, adding, “The stage would be the gainer by the presence of such clean-cut boys.”26

Chouinard played briefly for Brooklyn again during 1915. He appeared in only four games before the Tip-Tops released him in May to their Hartford, Connecticut, farm club in the independent Colonial League. He played in 74 games for Senators manager Jim Delehanty, who used him mostly at shortstop. After receiving ten days’ notice of his release from Brooklyn. Chouinard decided to go home to Chicago rather than remain in Hartford.

“He says, and says rightly, that he can make more money than the $100 a month offered by the Colonial League playing semi-pro ball a couple of times a week, and have time to do some other line of work,” the Hartford Courant explained in August.27

The little utility man left “an excellent impression with the fans during his stay here, not only because he is a good ball player, but also because he has been a good sport,” the Courant later added. If Chouinard had seemed peevish upon striking out, “that only proves that his heart is in his play. He will always receive a warm welcome in the city should he ever return.”28

Chouinard played in an October exhibition game with Grover Gilmore of the Kansas City Packers at tiny Wateska, Illinois, versus a team that included “Death Valley” Jim Scott and George “Buck” Weaver of the White Sox. The two Sox drew a warning from the American League for playing against Federal Leaguers.

The following spring Chouinard reported to Texas, where he expected to play again for Delahanty, now managing the Beaumont Oilers in the Class B Texas League. Delahanty instead sent him back to Connecticut and the New Haven Murlins of the Class B Eastern League. He played 121 games there at second base with middling success.

After the 1916 season a Connecticut newspaper noted “a possibility that Phil Chouinard may be sent to the outfield and a new second baseman signed. Chouinard is a regular outfielder and when in shape there is no more valuable player in Class B baseball.”29 New Haven released him during the winter, however, ending his scattershot professional career.

The beginning of the 1917 season saw Chouinard managing a club in Chicago’s City League. He might have remained there but for America’s entry into the First World War during the first week of April. Rather than ending his baseball career, the war ironically marked its peak.

Chouinard enlisted as a chief yeoman in August. Chief petty officer was a noncommissioned enlisted rank, yeoman a clerical rating. Boston Red Sox player-manager Jack Barry also would enlist and become a chief yeoman following the regular season, as would a number of other big leaguers, including George “Duffy” Lewis and “Sailor” Bob Shawkey. Chouinard reported for duty at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station beside Lake Michigan north of Chicago.

Over nine hundred sailors reportedly had tried out of for the station’s baseball team. The athletic director quickly appointed his new chief to manage the starting nine, a navy magazine calling the officer fortunate to have “such a man, gifted with the executive ability and power to commend men as Chouinard. Already he has shown that he is the right man for the post.”30

Since few pro ballplayers had yet entered the navy, Chouinard’s 1917 aggregation was largely amateur. Their season record was “not one over which the sailors could waltz in ecstasy,” a station history said later.31 Still, the Chouinard nine made a decent showing, mostly playing Chicago-area semipro teams. The outlook was much brighter the following spring.

“The two strongest station nines in the country promise to be those of the Great Lakes and the Boston districts,” the New York Tribune said in March 1918, meaning the teams bossed by chiefs Chouinard and Barry.32

“In any congregation of 20,000 or more youths averaging twenty years, there is bound to be at least 500 who have had liberal experience in manipulating the li’l ol’ baseball,” the Great Lakes station newspaper said a month later. But, it added, “Manager Chouinard does not want any of the men on the Station with baseball ability to become discouraged because of the number of stars who will appear on the squad.”33

The Great Lakes roster early in the 1918 season included such past and future big leaguers as Joe Leonard, John “Paddy” Driscoll, George Halas, and several others. The enlistment of White Sox pitcher Urban “Red” Faber—who’d won three games for the champion White Sox during the 1917 World Series—gave Chouinard the cornerstone for a great team. Like his skipper, Faber enlisted as a chief yeoman.

Navy sportswriter Jimmie Corcoran wrote that Great Lakes now had enough star players for two teams, “and it has taken the expert judgment of Manager Chouinard to select the best nine men for the representative station team. He has had nearly ten years league baseball experience so the sailor rooters undoubtedly will approve his selections.”34

The bluejackets definitely approved. With Chouinard playing and managing, and with a handsome new home ballpark, the Great Lakes nine dominated their various service, semipro, and industrial competition that summer. During one stretch the station won thirteen straight games.

Chouinard and Great Lakes claimed a navy championship in August by winning two of three games from the visiting Atlantic Fleet team that included Walter “Rabbit” Maranville, Del Gainer, and Lawton “Whitey” Witt (refugees from Barry’s fine Charlestown Navy Yard club broken up by a disapproving admiral.) Faber notched both victories.

Lieutenant (junior grade) John “Doc” Lavan, newly arrived at Great Lakes from the St. Louis Cardinals as a naval surgeon, took over as manager the following month. “The change was made of Dr. Lavan’s rank and greater baseball experience,” the station newspaper said, a statement that lowly seamen might have regarded skeptically.35 Chief Chouinard stayed on as a player.

Great Lakes’ baseball season ended in early October when the Spanish Influenza pandemic paused all navy sports. With no hope for a West Coast tour, the club closed out a 30–8 record. The service dispersed its players to other duties or training schools.

Perhaps stung by his replacement as skipper, Chief Chouinard moved toward becoming an officer himself by entering the Officers Material School. Halas and Driscoll were already studying to be ensigns too. The three all received their commissions in 1919, months after the November 11 armistice had ended the war, and all were soon discharged.

Chouinard began working during the summer for the Republic Motor Truck Company in Alma, Michigan, the largest truck producer in the world. Naturally, he played on the company ball club. The following season Republic’s powerful team under manager Henry “Hank” Olmstead also included Zerah “Rip” Hagerman and Ennis “Rebel” Oakes.

In 1923 Chouinard signed on with a new Kirsch Manufacturing ballclub in Sturgis, Michigan, regarded as among the best independent teams in the Midwest. Also managed by Olmstead, the team included Hagerman, Vic Saier, and a number of other former professionals. Sturgis manufacturer C. L. “Harry” Spence moved his club to Indiana the following year.

“Mr. Spence runs a factory to make his money,” a Michigan paper said of his new Fort Wayne Chiefs. “He runs a baseball team to spend it. … Mr. Spence’s athletes are gold lined, morocco [sic] bound.”36 But by February 1925 Spence was “baseball broke” and said he could no longer finance his “million dollar” team.37

Chouinard spent the 1925 season playing for a town team in tiny Angola, Indiana. He returned to Chicago semipro ball during 1926, playing briefly in the outfield for Paddy Driscoll, one of his Great Lakes stars. Chouinard then took over for a few weeks as player-manager of the Rhinelander Rhinos in the semipro Wisconsin Valley League. He ended the season with the semipro Racine (Wisconsin) Eskimos (also called the Belles) in the semipro Wisconsin-Illinois Midwest Baseball League.

Racine had hopes of somehow joining the Class B Illinois-Indiana-Iowa (Three-I) League for 1927. Although by then nearing age 40, Chouinard was among those players eligible to play. Racine failed to enter the circuit, however, and his diamond days were finished. Except for a few appearances in Old-Timers games at Chicago, Chouinard largely dropped from public view.

Fifteen years later, during World War II, the former White Sox and chief yeoman was living with a relative in Chicago and working at the address of a large North Side residential building. So far as is known he never married or had children. Phil Chouinard died at age 67 on April 28, 1955, at Hines, Illinois, outside the city, likely at a veterans hospital there. He was buried at Oakridge Cemetery in nearly Hillside, Illinois. The baseball world took no notice of his passing.

Acknowledgments

This biography was reviewed by Darren Gibson and Jan Finkel and checked for accuracy by members of SABR’s fact-checking team.

Photo credit: Felix Chouinard, Baseball-Reference.com.

Notes

1 “Athletics,” St. Ignatius Collegian, July 1906: 59.

2 “Heckinger’s Smash Brings a Victory,” Des Moines Register, August 21, 1908: 7.

3 “Waterloo Comes to Meet Locals,” Des Moines Register, April 17, 1909: 8.

4 “Kids Win and Lose Against Senators,” Green Bay Gazette, August 2, 1909: 3.

5 R. W. Lardner, “Hose Victims of Mullin’s Curves,” Chicago Tribune, September 12, 1910: 12.

6 Hugh Edmund Keough as “HEK,” “In the Wake of the News,” Chicago Tribune, September 13, 1910: 10.

7 “Notes of the White Sox,” Chicago Tribune, September 12, 1910: 12.

8 R. W. Lardner, “Start in First Gives Sox Game,” Chicago Tribune, September 18, 1910: III-1.

9 “Chouinard Doing Fine Work in CH [sic],” Green Bay Gazette, September 19, 1910: 5.

10 I. E. Sanborn, “Sox Cinch Title to 6th Position,” Chicago Tribune, October 9, 1910: III-1.

11 “Rain Stops Cub Game,” Chicago Daily News, March 22, 1911: 1.

12 “White Sox, 1; Cleveland 2,” Chicago Daily News, September 1, 1911: 2.

13 “Cubs, 3; Cardinals, 2,” Chicago Daily News, September 5, 1911: 2.

14 Ring Lardner, “Boneheads of Some Big Leaguers,” Indianapolis Star, March 14, 1926: VII-7.

15 I. E. Sanborn, “Chouinard’s Nap Costs Sox Game,” Chicago Tribune, September 2, 1911: 9.

16 “The Stage,” Detroit Times, January 23, 1912: 4.

17 “Chouinard Playing at Crystal Theater,” Green Bay Gazette, February 14, 1912: 10.

18 “Snow Is Removed from Ball Park,” Des Moines Register, March 16, 1912.

19 “Phil Chouinard Signs with Menominee Club,” Green Bay Gazette, June 1, 1912: 7.

20 “Weeks Views Sunday Game,” Rockford (IL) Register-Gazette, August 4, 1913: 5.

21 I. E. Sanborn, “Montreal Seeks ‘Fed’ Berth,” Chicago Tribune, January 7, 1914: 14.

22 “Open Date for Local Feds on Western Trip,” Pittsburg Press, June 19, 1914: 36.

23 James Crusinberry, “Pittsfeds’ Swats Land in Tenth, 4-3,” Chicago Tribune, June 17, 1914: 15.

24 “In the Brookfed Camp,” Brooklyn Times, August 15, 1914: 10.

25 “Next Five Games at Washington Park May Alter Federal League Race,” Brooklyn Eagle, September 14, 1914: II-2.

26 “Brookfeds Win and Lose,” Brooklyn Eagle, September 4, 1914: II-2.

27 “Hartford to Lose Two Good Players,” Hartford Courant, August 7, 1915: 17.

28 “Somebody Ripped the Umpire’s Grip,” Hartford Courant, August 14, 1915: 17.

29 “Collins Pleased with Danny Murphy’s Work,” Norwich (CT) Bulletin, September 28, 1916: 3.

30 Jimmie Corcoran, “Noted Athletes in the Navy,” Great Lakes Recruit, September 1917: 32.

31 Francis Buzzell, The Great Lakes Naval Training Station: A History, 155.

32 “Major League Players Nucleus of Navy Teams,” New York Tribune, March 12, 1918: 12.

33 “Call to Outdoors Issued for Ball Men,” Great Lakes Bulletin, April 3, 1918: 4.

34 Jimmie Corcoran, “With the Athletes,” Great Lakes Recruit, June 1918: 94.

35 “Dr. Lavan Named Manager of Team,” Great Lakes Bulletin, September 14, 1918: 8.

36 “Kellogg Win a Mud Battle,” Battle Creek (Michigan) Enquirer and News, May 11, 1924.

37 “’Angel’ at Sturgis Leaves Baseball,” Detroit Free Press, February 15, 1925.