Fred Lucas

Although two-and-a-half months with the 1935 Philadelphia Phillies were Fred “Fritz” Lucas’s only major-league opportunity, the 20 games he appeared in as an outfielder/pinch-hitter were but a small part of a larger legacy that earned him induction into the [Maryland] Eastern Shore Baseball Hall of Fame.1 “[Lucas] is one of the few men to complete the cycle in baseball — player, manager, scout, business manager, club president and league president,” noted the Baltimore Sun in 1971.2

Frederick Warrington “Fritz” Lucas was born on January 19, 1903, in Vineland, New Jersey, about 45 miles west of Atlantic City. His father, William R. Lucas, was a newspaper printer from New York. Fred’s mother, the former Lillie Watkins, had emigrated to the United States from Gloucestershire, England. Of William and Lillie’s nine children — five boys and four girls — Fred was number six. By 1910, the family had moved 40 miles north and settled in Philadelphia.

According to the 1940 census, Fred stopped attending school after the seventh grade. By his late teens, he earned mentions in local newspapers for his baseball playing. On May 6, 1922, for example, the Evening Public Ledger listed him as the starting left fielder for the semipro West Phillys’ season opener against the Brooklyn Royal Giants at 58th and Walnut Streets, where new stands had been erected to accommodate up to 750 spectators.3 That August 3, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Lucas pitched an 8-0 shutout in Cardington to lead his St. Carthage club past the Kismet A.A. team in the opener of West Philadelphia’s amateur playoffs.4

In the fall of 1922, Lucas was identified as one of four aspiring boxers who successfully lobbied the West Philadelphia Athletic Club to add the sport, allowing them to compete in the city’s upcoming amateur tournament.5 Although evidence is not available, some published reports later claimed that Lucas was undefeated during a brief professional fighting career.6 However, as one article described, “Soccer was really Lucas’ special dish. He started as a goaltender with the Wolfendon-Shore team ‘down in the hollow’ west of 63rd and Catherine streets in 1923.”7 In 1941, former pitcher turned columnist Stan Baumgartner opined, “[1917-1919 Phillies infielder Harry] Pearce and Lucas were two of the finest goaltenders ever developed in America.”8

Soccer season ended just as baseball was beginning, and Lucas’s exploits on the city’s semipro sandlots convinced Philadelphia Athletics manager Connie Mack to sign him to a contract in the summer of 1923.9 In August, Lucas debuted in the Class D Blue Ridge League for a team managed by Mack’s son, Earle. The Martinsburg (West Virginia) Blue Sox’s 67-30 record was the circuit’s best by 15 games and Lucas, a 5-foot-10, 165-pounder who batted and threw righthanded, hit .336 with two homers in the 31 contests in which he appeared.

For the rest of the decade, Lucas continued playing both sports. By 1925, he was also managing the Lomax soccer club. “Fritz is also popular with his players, and for that matter with everyone in the game, because of the fact he is always willing to meet anyone halfway,” the Inquirer reported.10

Lucas spent the 1924 baseball season in the Class A Eastern League. The Bridgeport (Connecticut) Bears went 65-88 to finish last in the eight-team circuit, but he led the club with 148 games played and batted .269 as the lineup’s youngest regular. He produced 18 doubles and four triples, but no home runs. When Bridgeport’s season ended, Lucas was ordered to report to the Athletics on September 15, but he saw no action for the American League team.11 He returned to Bridgeport to begin 1925 and hit .200 in a dozen games before he was sent down to the Class B New-York Pennsylvania League on May 11.12 In 115 games with the Scranton (Pennsylvania) Miners, Lucas batted .299.

Over the next two seasons, Lucas bounced around frequently. On June 27, 1926, Scranton traded him along with 41-year-old pitcher Eddie Matteson to the NYPL’s York (Pennsylvania) White Roses for two players (southpaw Jimmy Lynch and infielder Dewey Steffen) who never ascended higher than Class AA.13 Lucas spent only three weeks with York, however. He was released on July 18 and left town the next day to join the Columbus (Ohio) Senators in the Class AA American Association, where he hit .263 in 28 games.14

Lucas’s contract card from The Sporting News’s archives chronicles his movement in 1927. Columbus sent him to the Mobile (Alabama) Bears of the Class A Southern Association, who returned him in May. Then it was back to Alabama with the Selma Selmians of the Class B Southern League in June, followed by the Bloomington (Illinois) Bloomers of the Class B Three-I League in July. The only record of Lucas seeing game action with any of these teams is a 7-for-63 (.111) performance in 16 appearances for Selma. Nevertheless, the Daily Republican described him as a “heavy-hitting outfielder” in reporting the announcement by Charleroi (Pennsylvania) Babes manager John McIlvain’s that Lucas had signed with his Class C Middle Atlantic League club on July 24.15 In 47 games, Lucas lived up to the billing by batting .371.

In 1928, Lucas returned to Charleroi and hit .328 with 34 doubles in 108 games. He came back again in 1929 and led the team — now called the Governors — to the Middle Atlantic League championship by batting a league record .407 in 113 contests.16 Lucas’s 113 RBIs and 34 doubles also paced the circuit, and his career-high 21 home runs matched Fairmont’s Moose Solters for the top spot. In 437 at-bats, Lucas struck out only 24 times.17 By the first week of August, St. Louis Cardinals business manager Branch Rickey had purchased Lucas’s contract and ordered him to report at the conclusion of Charleroi’s season.18 The Governors beat the Wheeling Stogies in four of five playoff games after tying for first place with a 67-47 record.

The Cardinals sent Lucas to the Rochester (New York) Red Wings in the Class AA International League to begin 1930. “[Player-manager Billy] Southworth and Fred Lucas … have been alternating in centerfield,” reported the April 10 issue of The Sporting News. “Southworth intends to stay in the lineup as long as his legs permit him to play.”19 Southworth, a 37-year-old former big leaguer, batted .370 in 92 games while Lucas — after hitting .293 in 35 appearances — was demoted to St. Louis’s Class A Texas League affiliate — the Houston Buffaloes — in June. There, he batted .210 in 38 games, including seven pitching appearances in which he logged a 2-1 record, but walked 31 batters in 30 innings and posted a 5.40 ERA. On July 30, Lucas was shipped to the St. Joseph (Missouri) Saints of the Class A Western League. In 62 contests, he hit .291, but the Saints finished in last place.

On April 11, 1931, Lucas’s Upper Darby soccer squad played a team called the Phillies to a scoreless tie in front of 8,000 fans at Bogar Field. By virtue of their 5-4 victory over the same opponent the previous week — overcoming a 4-0 deficit — Upper Darby claimed the league championship.20 Lucas was a player-manager, as he’d previously been with the Cardington club, but he stuck to managing in ensuing years because, the Inquirer explained, “He didn’t want to take a chance with receiving an injury that might hurt his chances of advancing in baseball.”21 In May, however, Lucas’s career stalled. His contract card from The Sporting News’s archives records that he was suspended, and Wilkes-Barre’s Evening News later reported that he quit to play sandlot ball when the Cardinals tried to send him back to Houston.22 Lucas briefly resurfaced in the Middle Atlantic League in 1932, batting .264 in 32 games for the Johnstown (Pennsylvania) Johnnies before he was released in June. That summer — during a season in which the major-league Phillies average attendance was 3,492 — an estimated 4,000 spectators saw Lucas go deep for the South Phillies of the semipro Philadelphia League on August 4.23

Lucas remained in the semipro ranks for three years. On August 5, 1934, he was in the lineup for the Wentz Olney squad when they hosted the famed House of David team. Fans encircled the diamond at Front and Chew Streets to see one of the world’s most famous female athletes — two-time 1932 Olympic Gold medalist Babe Didrikson — pitch the first inning for the visitors. She hit Lucas with a pitch and Wentz Olney prevailed, 7-2.24

In June 1935, Lucas traveled to New York to join the Glendale, Queens-based Farmers baseball club as a replacement for Chick Genovese, who wasn’t hitting.25 On June 29, Brooklyn’s Times Union added, “The Farmers brought outfielder Fritz Lucas here from Philly to attract the German trade to the park.”26 On July 12, however, Philadelphia Phillies president Gerry Nugent announced that his National League club had released shortstop Blondy Ryan and purchased Lucas, who’d joined the team in St. Louis that morning.27

Lucas debuted at Wrigley Field on July 15. After the Phillies tied the Cubs, 1-1, on Joe Bowman’s two-out, pinch-hit single in the top of the ninth, Lucas entered the game as a left fielder in the bottom of the frame on a double switch. With the bases loaded, he caught a Stan Hack fly ball for the third out to force extra innings. In the last of the 10th, Lucas gloved the first two outs, but Philadelphia lost, 2-1, on a walk and Billy Herman’s decisive double. Lucas made his first plate appearance three days later in the series finale. Pinch-hitting for pitcher Pretzel Pezzullo with two outs in the ninth and the Phillies eight runs behind, he was walked by Chicago righty Charlie Root. Lucas’s first official at-bat came at the Polo Grounds on July 30. Leading off the ninth inning with Philadelphia trailing the Giants by six, he popped up to the catcher pinch-hitting against Leon Chagnon.

Lucas made his first start the next day, playing right field and batting third against southpaw Carl Hubbell. He struck out in the opening frame but put the Phillies ahead, 3-2, in the third inning with a run-scoring, double-play grounder. In the fifth and seventh, Lucas notched his first two hits — singles to center and right, respectively, against the future Hall of Famer. He finished 2-for-5 in Philadelphia’s 5-3 victory.

That summer, the Inquirer noted the number of former soccer standouts in Phillies uniforms. Brothers and infielders Lou and Dino Chiozza had been high school booters in Tennessee, while manager Jimmie Wilson and coach Dick Spalding — both Philadelphians — had starred for the Lighthouse team in their younger days and continued to attend local matches.28

The Phillies were in seventh place when they returned home to the Baker Bowl at the beginning of August to face the Dodgers. Wilson announced his modest goal of overtaking Brooklyn for fifth place, and his willingness to play more youngsters. (Chile Gómez, 26-year-old rookie, supplanted 25-year-old shortstop Mickey Haslin in Philadelphia’s only major lineup change down the stretch.) “I’m also going to give, Fritz Lucas, a local semipro slugger, a chance to win a job in our outfield,” Wilson said.29 As it happened, Lucas went 1-for-7 on the Phillies 30-game homestand — pinch-hitting six times and playing a total of four innings of center field in two blowout losses. His only hit in that stretch was a single off Reds reliever Don Brennan on August 24.

Philadelphia reached fifth place briefly but occupied sixth when they left town on a three-week road trip and dropped back to seventh to stay. In Chicago on September 4, Lucas’s seventh-inning, pinch-hit single off Larry French brought the tying run to the plate but, by the time he drew a bases-loaded walk two innings later, the Phillies were one out away from an 8-2 defeat to the eventual NL pennant winners. The Cardinals still topped the standings by a single game after they pounded the Phillies on September 11 in St. Louis. Lucas entered the contest as a fourth-inning defensive replacement and led off the ninth with a meaningless single against Paul “Daffy” Dean. The following day in Pittsburgh, Lucas started and went 1-for-4 against Jim Weaver, but Philadelphia was shut out, 11-0. On September 16, Lucas played all 11 innings of a 3-2 defeat in Cincinnati and went 2-for-5 versus Reds’ rookie Lee Grissom, but his muff of a second-inning fly to right field led to an unearned run.

On September 22, Lucas made his only start in Philadelphia in the second game of a doubleheader against the Boston Braves. He went 0-for-3 and recorded five putouts in center field before yielding his position to Ethan Allen in the Phillies’ come-from-behind, 4-3 victory. In Lucas’s final big-league at-bat, two days later at the Polo Grounds, he singled to left off the Giants’ Allyn Stout as a seventh-inning pinch-hitter and came around to score his only run in the majors. On January 9, 1936 — 10 days before his 33rd birthday — Lucas was unconditionally released by the Phillies.30 He finished his career with a .265 batting average (9-for-34) in 20 games.

When the managers of the semipro Philadelphia League met in April, Lucas was placed on the voluntarily retired list.31 He became the player-manager for the Brookline team in Philadelphia’s Main Line League.32 In his birthplace of Vineland, New Jersey to face Ray Steineder in the Strand Billiards’ season opener, Lucas delivered two ringing doubles and a single.33 On August 21, Lucas was in the lineup for a Chester, Pennsylvania-based club against the Johnson’s All-Stars, a team visiting from Atlantic City led by Negro League great Pop Lloyd. Facing 17-year-old righthander Max Manning, Lucas walked and scored in a six-run first inning that propelled Chester to an 8-6 victory.34

Branch Rickey hired Lucas to lead a baseball school for Cardinals prospects in Asheville, North Carolina in 1937.35 That summer, Lucas managed the Cambridge (Maryland) Cardinals — St. Louis’s affiliate for the inaugural season of the resurrected Class D Eastern Shore League. (Hall of Famers Jimmie Foxx and Mickey Cochrane began their careers in the first iteration of the ESL, which lasted from 1922-1928). Lucas led the team to a 53-43 record and batted .309, though he was limited to 29 appearances because of a ruptured blood vessel in his leg.36

Lucas discovered Cambridge’s second baseman, Danny Murtaugh, in Norwood, Pennsylvania. “Fritz made an agreement with us that he would play Danny for 30 days as a regular even if he failed to get a single hit in that time,” described Chester Times sports editor Bill Burk, who recommended the player.37 Murtaugh played nine years in the majors, managed the Pirates to two World Series titles, and cited the opportunity as his first big break in baseball.38 “[Murtaugh] was a great hustler,” Lucas recalled. “All the players seemed to gravitate toward him. He was a leader.”39

Lucas spent 1938 with the Union Springs (Alabama) Redbirds of the Class D Alabama-Florida League, where he managed the team to a 70-60 record and hit .228 in his final 41 games as a professional player. In 1939, he returned to Cambridge. Despite finishing 14 games behind in the regular season without any future big leaguers on the roster, Lucas’s Cardinals led the circuit in attendance and won the ESL playoffs.40 “Those were bucolic days,” he recalled. “We played home games at Fairground Park, where admission was 50 cents.”41 Lucas moved on to skipper the Hamilton (Ontario) Red Wings of the Class D PONY League in 1940. By then, Lucas was the father of one and — according to that year’s census — a widower.42

While Major League Baseball carried on during World War II, 10 of the 41 minor-league circuits — including the Eastern Shore League — disbanded in the first season following the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor. When the fighting stopped late in the summer of 1945, only 12 minor leagues were still operating. Lucas moved to Maryland and became the physical education director at Cambridge High School.43 On February 2, 1946, he wed Lola Mae Creighton — a native of nearby Hoopers Island who also had one child from a previous marriage. Together they would have three daughters: Jacqueline, Donna, and Patricia.44

If professional baseball were to return to Cambridge and the region in peacetime, Lucas realized that upgraded facilities and increased support from the majors were required. He made several trips to New York to visit Rickey, who had left the Cardinals to become the Brooklyn Dodgers club president in 1943. “Mr. Rickey didn’t warm up to my idea,” Lucas recalled. “He was an avid outdoorsman who would rather talk about fishing than Class D baseball. I invited him to come to Cambridge to fish.”45

After they caught 96 in the Choptank River one day, Rickey returned to Brooklyn with 50 of them wrapped in copies of the Cambridge Daily Banner. When Rickey came back with his son to go duck hunting, two of the locals that Lucas recruited to help make the day a success engaged in a profane shouting match. “[Rickey] was laughing as hard as a man could laugh,” Lucas recalled. “He often said, those two men out there on the water cussing each other out, was one of the funniest sights he ever saw.” By the first week of April 1946, Lucas — by then the business manager of the Cambridge Dodgers — announced that a $38,000 ballpark financed with help from the National League franchise was almost ready for spring training.46

After finishing seventh in the eight-team circuit in 1946, Cambridge romped to a league-best 91-34 record and topped the circuit in regular-season attendance in 1947.47 Rookie catcher Tim Thompson (.349, 129 RBIs) and southpaw Chris Van Cuyk (25-2, 1.94 ERA) were the club’s future big leaguers, though the recently married Thompson nearly quit baseball midway through his first professional season because his furniture had been repossessed and he was behind on his rent. When Lucas found out, he called Thompson’s landlady and grocer and had the bills sent to the ballclub. Forty-five years later, Thompson — by then a St. Louis Cardinals scouting supervisor — remarked, “If it hadn’t been for Fred, I wouldn’t be in baseball today.”48 On September 15, 1947, a single-game, Eastern Shore League record 3,761 fans crammed into Cambridge’s 2,267-capacity Dodger Park for a semifinal playoff contest. The season ended on a downer, however, when Cambridge lost the decisive seventh game of the finals to Seaford’s Dean Crooks on a one-hit shutout.49

After serving as president of the Cambridge Dodgers in 1948, Lucas was named president of the Eastern Shore League heading into the next season — the circuit’s last, as it happened.50 “In 1949 our troubles began to pile up,” he recalled. “Some teams in the league couldn’t get satisfactory working agreements with sponsoring major league teams. Attendance in some towns fell. The league folded after the 1949 season.”51 In 1956, Lucas met with Kansas City Athletics vice president Roy Mack and the minor leagues’ Director of Operations, George Trautman, in efforts to revive the Eastern Shore League for a fourth time, but it was ultimately deemed unfeasible.52

Lucas operated an office supply store in Cambridge, called Lucas and Fowler, for a while, then opened a sporting goods store. According to one report, “Folks in town joked that he nearly went broke because of his penchant for giving away sports gear to every kid who couldn’t afford to buy from him,” The Secrets of the Eastern Shore website describes him as “a driving force behind the start of the Cambridge Little League, the Cambridge Colt League, and the Cambridge Pony League.”53 In 1965, Lucas was voted vice president of the latter circuit.54

For three decades, Lucas was involved in local politics, including election to Dorchester County’s House of Delegates.55 By the fall of 1971, when Cambridge’s American Legion Hall hosted a Testimonial Dinner for him, Lucas had been Dorchester County’s treasurer for 17 years. Maryland Governor J. Millard Tawes was one of the estimated 500 people that showed up to honor Lucas that night, as were baseball standouts with ties to the Eastern Shore like future Hall of Famer Judy Johnson, Mickey Vernon, and Bill Nicholson.56 Murtaugh — weeks after skippering the Pirates to a World Series title — was the guest speaker.57

When Cambridge hosted Maryland’s American Legion All-Star Game in 1972, Lucas and former Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Rex Barney were the managers.58 Lucas — by then 70 — skippered the squad again in 1973, and he was described as a Dodgers scout in an article about the contest.59

Lucas was 84 when he died in Cambridge on March 11, 1987. He is buried in Dorchester Memorial Park. As of 2021, amateur baseball is still played at J. Edward Walter Park, on the same grounds in Cambridge where Dodger Park used to stand.60

Acknowledgments

This biography was reviewed by Gregory H. Wolf and Joel Barnhart and checked for accuracy by SABR’s fact-checking team.

The author would like to thank SABR colleague Marty Payne for research assistance.

Sources

In addition to sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted www.ancestry.com, www.baseball-reference.com and www.retrosheet.org.

Notes

1 “Fred Lucas – Player,” http://www.esbhalloffame.org/index.cfm?ref=30200&ref2=86 (last accessed September 18, 2021).

2 “Testimonial Set for Fred Lucas,” Baltimore Sun, October 18, 1971: C4. Although the BoxRec.com website does list a welterweight from Philadelphia named Fred Lucas, each of that fighter’s recorded bouts occurred between 1905-1909 when the former major leaguer Fred Lucas was between two and six years old.

3 “West Phillys Open with Brooklyn Royal Giants,” Evening Public Ledger (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), May 6, 1922: 11.

4 “St. Carthage Stops Kismet’s Streak,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 3, 1922: 19.

5 “West Phila. Club Adds Boxing to its Roster,” Evening Public Ledger, November 16, 1922: 24.

6 “Testimonial Set for Fred Lucas.”

7 George Butz, “Southworth’s Son Praised by ‘Fritz’ Lucas, Ex-Phil,” Philadelphia Inquirer, February 25, 1945: 28.

8 Stan Baumgartner, “Flynn’s Toe Carried Mighty Wallop,” Philadelphia Inquirer, January 31, 1941: 26.

9 “‘Fritz’ Lucas to Report to Mack Sept. 15,” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 2, 1924: 18.

10 “Kicks From the Corner,” Philadelphia Inquirer, March 24, 1925: 19.

11 “‘Fritz’ Lucas to Report to Mack Sept. 15.”

12 “Scranton Club Gets Fred Lucas,” Allentown (Pennsylvania) Morning Call, May 12, 1925: 19.

13 “Scranton Miners Trade Two Players with York,” Allentown Morning Call, June 28, 1926: 12.

14 “Fred Lucas Goes to American Association,” Allentown Morning Call, July 19, 1926: 28.

15 “Charleroi Lineup Given Severe Shakeup,” Daily Republican (Monongahela, Pennsylvania), July 25, 1927: 3.

16 In 1930, future Hall of Famer Joe Medwick batted .419 for the circuit’s Scottsdale Scotties.

17 “Fred Lucas, With Mark of .407, Led Hitters of Middle Atlantic,” The Sporting News, January 9, 1930: 6.

18 “Mahanoy City Player Sold to Cardinals,” Plain Speaker (Hazleton, Pennsylvania), August 7, 1929: 5.

19 Gabriel Paul, “Rochester’s Red Wings All Set for Flag Drive,” The Sporting News, April 10, 1930: 2.

20 “Upper Darby Booters Win League Crown as Phoenix Ties with Lighthouse,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 12, 1931: 33.

21 “Phils Now Have Five Soccerites on Club’s Roster,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 25,1935: 40.

22 “Phillies Buy Fritz Lucas,” Evening News (Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania), July 12, 1935: 15.

23 “Wentz-Olney Victor Over South Phillies,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 5, 1932: 24.

24 “Wentz Olney Hands House of David Nine Third Philadelphia Setback,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 6, 1934: 15.

25 Irwin N. Rosee, “League Cubans in Keen Rivalry with Bushwick,” Times Union (Brooklyn, New York), June 18, 1935: 13.

26 Irwin N. Rosee, “Black Eagles Ready to Make Fresh Getaway,” Times Union, June 29, 1935: 13.

27 “Blondy Ryan Sent to Balto. Orioles,” Delaware County Daily Times (Chester, Pennsylvania), July 12, 1935: 4.

28 “Phils Now Have Five Soccerites on Club’s Roster,”

29 Bill McCullough, “Quaker City Leader Figures Youngsters Will Outplay Vets,” Times Union, August 3, 1935: 11.

30 “Phils Release Three,” Allentown Morning Call, January 10, 1936: 28.

31 “Bartram Gets Five Tossers in Confab,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 30, 1936: 19.

32 “Rube Yerk to Twirl for A.C. Nine Tonight,” Mercury (Pottstown, Pennsylvania), May 27, 1936: 5.

33 “Strand Nine Opens Home Season With 14-9 Win Over Brookline,” Vineland (New Jersey) Times, June 23, 1936: 8.

34 “Chester Beats Johnson Stars,” Delaware County Daily Times, August 22, 1936: 9.

35 Butz, “Southworth’s Son Praised by ‘Fritz’ Lucas, Ex-Phil.”

36 “Sports Shorts,” Delaware County (Chester, Pennsylvania) County Times, August 2, 1937: 6.

37 Bill Burk, “Sports Shots,” Delaware County Daily Times, March 8, 1946: 16.

38 Matt Zabitka, “Danny Credits Five Big ‘Breaks’,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 30, 1961: 17.

39 Associated Press, “Baseball Pays Respect,” Vineland (New Jersey) Times Journal, December 4, 1976: 6.

40 William W. Mowbray, The Eastern Shore Baseball League, (Tidewater Publishers, Centreville, Maryland: 1989): 58, 174.

41 Fred Lucas (as told to Barry Sparks), “I Remember… A Hunting Trip that Revived Baseball on the Shore,” Baltimore Sun, August 24, 1975: SM17.

42 Jim Duffy, “About That Day in 1945 When Baseball Hall of Famer Branch Rickey Went Fishing on the Choptank River,” March 17, 2020, https://www.secretsoftheeasternshore.com/way-back-cambridge-dodgers/ (last accessed September 18, 2021).

43 Butz, “Southworth’s Son Praised by ‘Fritz’ Lucas, Ex-Phil.”

44 “Lola Creighton Lucas,” Dorchester Star (Cambridge, Maryland), March 2, 2007: 8.

45 Lucas (as told to Sparks), “I Remember… A Hunting Trip that Revived Baseball on the Shore.”

46 “105 Dodgers Hopefuls Drill at Cambridge,” Washington Post, April 4, 1946: 13.

47 Mowbray, The Eastern Shore Baseball League: 84.

48 Bill Perry, “Tim Thompson Can Attest to Concern Shown Young Player in Cambridge,” Star-Democrat (Easton, Maryland), October 25, 1992: 8.

49 Mowbray, The Eastern Shore Baseball League: 70.

50 “Testimonial Set for Fred Lucas.”

51 Lucas (as told to Sparks), “I Remember… A Hunting Trip that Revived Baseball on the Shore.”

52 Mowbray, The Eastern Shore Baseball League: 79.

53 Duffy, “About That Day in 1945 When Baseball Hall of Famer Branch Rickey Went Fishing on the Choptank River.”

54 “Mezzick to Pilot Northern Ponies,” Denton (Maryland) Journal, March 11, 1965: 4.

55 “Testimonial Tonight to Honor Fred Lucas,” Baltimore Sun, November 6, 1971: B4.

56 Duffy, “About That Day in 1945 When Baseball Hall of Famer Branch Rickey Went Fishing on the Choptank River.”

57 “Testimonial Set for Fred Lucas.”

58 “Legion Stars Tangle Today,” Baltimore Sun, July 29, 1972: B6.

59 Bob Twigg, “Nellie Fox Coach in Legion All-Star Game,” Daily Mail (Hagerstown, Maryland), July 28, 1973: 19.

60 Duffy, “About That Day in 1945 When Baseball Hall of Famer Branch Rickey Went Fishing on the Choptank River.”