John Vann

Vann (a Cherokee) puttered around the St. Louis bullpen for a week until a home game on June 11 against the Boston Nationals. Lefty Tyler was working for Boston and he carried a shutout into the eighth. Then both teams rallied, and by the bottom of the ninth Boston led 5-3 but the Cardinals were threatening. The tying run came to the plate in the person of pinch-hitter John Vann. Vann’s time was at hand. It was his big-league debut – and it came and went in a Moonlight Graham moment. “Vann, batting for [pitcher Slim] Sallee, fanned, while Hug grounded to [Rabbit] Maranville.” Game lost, 5-3.1

After the game, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported: “Catcher Vann, who helped out here while Wingo and McLean were on the sick list, will be sent back to Indianapolis Friday.”2 And that was it: John Vann never got another shot at the major leagues. More than a century later, his big-league-baseball record is as short as an epitaph. He’s a one at-bat player, a lifetime .000 hitter.

That is a dismissive understatement of John Vann’s life in the game. He was, by many measures, a baseball success: 17 years, 14 teams – college and pros – playing and managing. His real story, little more than a footnote today, is a saga of Deadball days in the American heartland.

People who saw Vann in his prime were surprised at his size – 6 feet tall, around 190 pounds – and at his athleticism. One sportswriter’s first impression: “Vann is a graceful and easy moving receiver and he steps into the ball with a terrific cut when hitting.”3 He was also bright, college-educated, and the scion of a well-to-do Cherokee Nation family. A 1912 sports-page profile concluded that Vann was “in the game just for the love of it,” adding that he “owns some plantations that would swallow all the ball parks in this circuit.”4 Writers often remarked on his winning personality and his good looks: One of Vann’s teams seriously considered giving away his autographed picture on ladies day.5 In short, in an age when every American city and town cheered its homegrown baseball heroes, Vann was a natural. One winter, his hometown paper found him greeting fans and friends on the street. “John is the only real base ball player in all northeastern Oklahoma probably,” the paper reported, “and when he comes to town he is like the circus elephant to the small boy.”6

John Vann was born on June 7, 1890, in Fairland, a farm town in Indian Territory that became the state of Oklahoma. Many Indians were not US citizens, Oklahoma did not become a state until 1907, and in many ways it was still the Old West. The land run came in 1889. The first great oil boom began less than a decade later. The horseback Dalton Gang met its storied end in a blazing gunfight in the streets of Coffeyville, Kansas, barely 60 miles from Fairland. John Vann was 2 years old that year.

But for Vann, Indian Territory would be a land of opportunity. Fairland was at the heart of the Cherokee Nation. The Vann clan had produced important tribal statesmen and canny business leaders going back generations.7 Like other tribes, the Cherokee were repeatedly pushed off their lands, enduring broken treaties, punishing wars and the bitter Trail of Tears. But the Cherokees also had proven strikingly adaptive to legal systems and trade opportunities.8 Cherokee leaders developed a framework for self-government modeled on the US Constitution which served their civil society for a half-century. The tribe had its own legislature, its own judiciary, its own Cherokee-language newspaper. The Cherokee were recognized as one of the “Five Civilized Tribes.”9 John Vann’s father, David W. Vann, originally of Georgia, was both influential and successful: In Fairland there was a Vann Hall for community and tribal meetings, a Vann block of buildings where lawyers sought office space. The family holdings included modernized farms and an industrial brickyard serving regional growth.10 There may have been an oil tract as well, and as “prominent and well to do farmers,” the Vanns kept “a beautiful country home four miles southeast of town.”11 Wife and mother Martha Vann kept a bustling household: By 1910 there were extended family visitors and six siblings at home, John and five younger sisters. John Vann, heir apparent, who had his own acreage as part of the family holdings, was brought up in agriculture and the family business. But it was baseball that spoke to him.

He would have taken up the sport in the usual rural way: In Sooner Oklahoma that meant making a ball out of a green walnut wrapped in yarn and crudely covered with leather. There were plenty of open spaces inviting the game, and by 1904 there was a four-team area league. In his midteens, Vann’s parents sent him to Drury College, a small private school in Springfield, Missouri. Drury, founded with Congregationalist roots in the 1870s, had traditionally welcomed students from Oklahoma Indian Territory. And it had a baseball team. Vann was hitting college pitching there in 1907 when he was just 16. By 1909 he had made the jump to the University of Arkansas and Razorback baseball. By 1910, he was being touted as “the sensation of the western college circuit,” having hit .500 over a 32-game stretch.12 That April the World Series champion Pittsburgh Pirates were training in the area and booked a game with Arkansas. Pirates manager Fred Clarke saw Vann play an errorless first base, handle two double plays, and pound one over the outfielders’ heads off star pitcher Howie Camnitz.13 By June the Pirates had signed Vann. He was sent to the Class-B Connecticut League, where he got into about 90 games for Hartford, drawing good reviews. His batting average for the season was then reported as .265, notably better than the .241 that survives in the spotty record.14

To this point, Vann had been a capable first baseman with a good bat. He played hard, he drove the ball and yet he was also a reliable contact hitter. He put the ball in play; he could sacrifice dependably. (One season, playing for Shreveport in the Texas League, he struck out just 14 times in 331 plate appearances, fewest of any regular in the league.15 ) But his hitting wilted after this rookie year. Vann was with Hartford for the next two seasons, and his average tailed off – dipping to just .226 in 1912. What happened?

At the start of the 1911 season, Hartford decided to make him a catcher. He took up the challenge to learn the new position in earnest – and to learn it on the job. He had done a little catching, back when he also thought he might like pitching or second base. But this was no small order, and Vann had just begun when a series of shocking personal developments derailed things. Early in May, his mother developed erysipelas on her foot and was hospitalized with serious complications. Vann prepared to rush home, but then was told his mother was improving, so he stayed with the team. To his lasting regret: Shocking news came in side-by-side news stories in mid-May: His mother had taken a turn for the worse and would ultimately lose her leg – and with almost no warning, his 22-year-old sister, Pearl, fell ill and died.16 With somber apologies to his team, Vann said goodbye, closed out his Connecticut affairs and went home. He had played in just 60 games. He did come back for the 1912 season, but the team had adjusted to his absence. There was a new first baseman and a new catcher as well. This left Vann trying to learn the catching position while platooning behind the plate and backing up at first, too. Then in August he was “beaned” by a projecting grandstand in Holyoke. The next day he broke a bone in his hand and was declared out for the season. In 1912 he played in just 72 games.17

For all that, in the winter of 1912 the Indianapolis club of the American Association had purchased Vann from Hartford. It was an exciting promotion. Vann had some lingering issues on defense – in particular, handling bunts, and high pops around the plate – but his bat was seductive and he came into camp as the potential starter. The stage was set for the season of his single major-league at-bat. It proved to be a misbegotten year in other ways as well.

The spring 1913 plan for the Indianapolis team called for about two weeks of conditioning in West Baden, 100 miles south of Indianapolis, followed by a couple of weeks of exhibition play as the squad moved north for a final series with the Chicago Cubs and then Opening Day. On March 21 that plan was obliterated by the storm of the century, a powerful destroyer that roared up from the south, spawning nine tornadoes, smashing whole towns and killing at least 48. Incredibly it got worse, then worse again, spinning off more tornadoes and a blizzard across 20 Midwest states, dumping record amounts of rain, tearing away homes and bridges and levees as rivers overflowed. In Indianapolis, six square miles of the city flooded and the ballpark was “severely damaged.” It was later reckoned that regionwide there had been 650 deaths and a quarter-million people left homeless. It would be recorded as The Great Flood of 1913, second only in death and destruction to the terrible Johnstown Flood of the previous century.18

On March 29 the “Homeless Hoosiers” straggled north to find a dry place “to start the spring training all over again.” Opening Day was barely two weeks away. The Cubs, having trained farther south in good weather, were fit and ready to play. The Indians were anything but, and when they arrived in Chicago, they found soggy grounds, chill winds and scattered knots of huddled spectators.19 They had two games against the Cubs.

With Vann watching from the frigid bench, the Cubs won the first game with a razzle-dazzle inning that featured a hit, a walk, a bunt, and a scratch hit with runners flying and two panicky throws by the Indians. Welcome to the big leagues. The next day John Vann was catching for Indianapolis. At game time, temperatures fell into the 30s. For two innings things went all right: Chicago scored one run. In the third, an infield error put a Cub on first. Wildfire Schulte then hit a high infield pop that came down almost exactly on the pitcher’s mound. “The visitors let Catcher Vann go after it, but he muffed it squarely.”20 The runners were racing and it was a paralyzing moment on the infield: Neither runner drew a throw. There ensued an embarrassing replay of the first game’s chaos – double steal, booted grounder, an umpire’s bad call, Heinie Zimmerman stole third then went right on to score when the third baseman let a throw get away, etc. It was a three-run inning with just one hit. The Hoosiers settled down after that. Vann played the whole game. The box score charged him with one of his team’s three errors; his fly ball in the eighth produced his team’s first run. Final score, 7-3, Chicago.21

Abruptly after that game John Vann all but disappeared. The commonly accessible versions of the historical statistical record show no entries for him as a member of the 1913 Indianapolis Indians.22 There’s no hint that he ever played an inning with the team. His 1913 season is presented as 74 games with the Sioux City Packers of the Class-A Western League and his one mortifying at-bat with the St. Louis Cardinals. Likewise, Vann’s name all but evaporated from sports-page coverage in the first half of 1913. This obscured the fact that as April turned to May, and then to June, John Vann suited up and rode the Indianapolis pine. It’s not that he never got in. He merely fell so far down the depth chart, playing so briefly and infrequently, that as those gaps in the record suggest, he was all but beneath notice. The truth looks more like this: Two appearances in April, maybe just four in May, totaling a few innings catching and 2-for-6 pinch-hitting.23 It may be that Vann hadn’t faced live pitching in nearly three weeks when he stepped up to the plate for his lone at-bat as a big-leaguer. Afterward, on June 14, just returned to Indianapolis, Vann “celebrated” being back by striking out in a 3-1 loss to Kansas City.24 Five days later he was sent down to Sioux City.

Sioux City must have been a joyous release. Vann arrived on a Saturday morning and started the afternoon game. It went 11 innings, his team won 6-5, and he caught the whole thing. Working with three unfamiliar pitchers, he was charged with a single passed ball. At the plate he was 3-for-4 with a sacrifice. In late July, the Sioux City Journal reported: “Another Indian has slugged his way to a place among the league’s star stickers – Jack Vann. The handsome catcher has been clouting consistently on the road and now has the fine average of .354.”25 Vann also found himself batting behind another fine hitter, the young “Tioga” George Burns. Burns was destined for a star career – 16 years in the American League, an MVP season, 2,018 hits, a lifetime .307 average – but in this moment, he and Vann became a popular young one-two punch. As August began, Vann was hitting .324; Burns was at .330. By late September, it was Vann .316, Burns .315. By season’s end in October, it was Vann .328, Burns .301.26 So the season of John Vann’s major-league at-bat ended.

In February 1914 Vann was sold to Terre Haute of the Central League. Terre Haute was part of a resilient Class-B league that this year had six franchises and a 133-game schedule. Vann was hailed as a star and a drawing card. Just turning 24, he was maturing as a team leader. One of his pitchers, two years younger, showed particular promise. This was Art Nehf. That year, Terre Haute finished fifth in the league. Art Nehf was 11-7. Vann hit .271 with a team-best 8 home runs. His fielding percentage was .971, but context is noteworthy. Vann “actually caught 131 games during the season, more than any other catcher in the league. He did not have a passed ball all season long.”27

Both Vann and Nehf were back in Terre Haute in 1915. Vann played in 100 games and led the team in batting at .300. Nehf led the pitching staff, going 19-10 with a 1.38 ERA. Called up by the Boston Braves, he won another five games. It was the start of a 15-year National League career in which he would win 184 games, more than 100 of them for the New York Giants and John McGraw. Vann was going to the Pacific Coast League. His performance caught the eye of catching-starved Cliff Blankenship, manager of the Salt Lake Bees.28

Vann arrived at spring training highly touted. But he soon developed a sore arm. On orders he rested it and resumed play, but it recurred, to the point where by April Blankenship was talking openly about returning Vann to Terre Haute.29 By May, Blankenship had relented; Vann’s hitting was redeeming. But by June the issue was back. The word was out and runners were taking liberties. In July Vann was back on the bubble and now even a .330 batting average wouldn’t balance the scales.30 In mid-August, Vann was sold to last-place Oakland, where he played out the PCL season. Once again there are large gaps in Vann’s statistical record. This conceals the fact that in 1916 he was one of only 10 qualifying PCL hitters to finish “in the charmed .300 circle.”31 Vann went into the last weekend of the season batting .306 and finished in a horse race with noted hitters Ping Bodie and Johnny Bassler. Filling more statistical blanks reaffirms that Vann was a top-flight hitter. Still, many of his real baseball moments would not be measurable that way. Rather, they are like faded scrapbook photos of the game as it was.

In the heyday of the Native American ballplayer, in 1915, a baseball story had been widely syndicated. In a Los Angeles paper, it was headlined “American Indians Star on Diamond.”32 It featured the usual standouts – Charles Bender (Chippewa), Jack Meyers (Cahuilla), Jim Thorpe (Sac and Fox) – as well as a dozen other Native Americans playing in the big leagues or high minors. Vann was among those mentioned prominently. In this time of national recognition for accomplished Native American ballplayers, he played in a spring game against the New York Giants and Jim Thorpe. He pinch-hit against spitballer George Johnson (Ho-Chunk) in the Coast League (and cracked out a double). And (in 1914, in camp with Indianapolis) he formed an all-Native American battery with Louis Leroy (Stockbridge-Munsee). They lost a memorable spring exhibition game, 2-1, to the Cubs. The game featured a two-rundown double-play and snow flurries.33 In his own time – and in the company of distinguished Native American ballplayers – John Vann made a name for himself.

This was also the evolutionary age of the storied Negro leagues. Coming off his .300 season at Terre Haute in 1915, Vann was named to a Midwest all-star team of high minor leaguers. The team’s primary postseason booking: the region’s young Black powerhouse team, the Indianapolis ABCs. The Negro National League was not established until 1920, but the upstart ABCs were staking an independent claim to Western rivalry with the great Chicago American Giants. The ABCs’ star was Oscar Charleston. A century on, consensus ranks Charleston as one of the four best baseball players ever, after Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, and Willie Mays. In this moment he was a rising 18-year-old phenom. The ABCs’ first baseman was Ben Taylor, a great fielder, hitter and baserunner. Both players were elected posthumously to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. There were other well-known names in the lineup: Bingo DeMoss, Dizzy Dismukes.34

Vann was the starting catcher for the all-stars. The teams first met in a doubleheader with a short second game, and the ABCs ran wild on the bases, winning 12-1 and 7-0. It was a shock. The all-stars promptly retrenched, upgrading pitching and middle infielders; Vann, the only all-star to collect three hits in the doubleheader, kept his place. That formula provided an epic thriller in the third game. “The 3,000 or more fans present saw a spicy game. Swell stops and neat catches were frequent, while Johnny McCarty’s wonderful throw to the plate in the ninth inning fairly set the white fans wild.”35 The score had been tied 3-3 since the sixth inning. There it stayed into the 10th, into the 11th, into the deepening twilight until the game was called for darkness in the 12th. Oscar Charleston was 3-for-5. Vann had a 1-for-5 day at the plate, but what he was remembered for was his part in an electrifying play at the plate.

Bottom of the ninth: First up was the speedy ABC right fielder Morten Clark. He hit a grounder to third, playable, but the throw went wild and Clark wound up on third base. Next up was catcher Russell Powell. “Powell lifted a fly to left center and after the catch Clark dashed for the plate with what he thought was the winning run. (Center fielder) McCarty shot the ball on the dead line toward home, and one neat hop put the pellet into Catcher Vann’s glove ahead of the runner.” Out!For the fourth game, the all-stars upgraded again, adding Detroit Tigers Donie Bush, Bob Veach, Hooks Dauss, and George Boehler. The all-stars won that matchup, 5-2, but it may have seemed anticlimactic. Dauss, who had won 24 this year for Detroit, and his teammate Boehler did all the pitching; Vann caught an error-free complete-game three-hitter and incidentally led the All-Stars in hitting across those four games.36

Vann left the team at that point. There would be two more games over the next two weeks. Both were won by the Major League All-Stars. The second game flared into a hot dispute over a close play on which Donie Bush, stealing second, was called safe. DeMoss and then Charleston rushed the umpire, fists flew, the umpire went down, spectators swarmed the field and “a race riot of serious proportions was narrowly averted.”37 After the two ABC players were removed from the field, peace prevailed and the game was concluded, after which the ABCs left immediately on a planned tour of Cuba. The Indianapolis News played its story as a brief with a box score at the bottom of the sports page and a headline like a benediction: “Scrappy Game Ends 1915 Baseball Season.” 38

The trajectory of John Vann’s baseball career arc changed again in 1917. He was with Waco in the Texas League that season. Vann was one of two catchers named to the league’s unofficial all-star team. But he had known for most of the season that he would not be playing in 1918. On April 6, 1917, Congress declared war on Germany. Vann soon registered for the draft in Waco. In February of 1918, the Waco club sent him a contract for the coming season but Vann’s Cherokee-country draft group had already undergone physicals. These men all had taken a distinct Indian path. Historically, Native Americans have an extraordinarily high rate of service in the US military. Culturally, the warrior ethos and pride in defending the homeland run deep. About 12,000 Native Americans, a dramatic number, ultimately served in World War I. Vann was one. In the summer of 1918, Private John Vann entered Officers Training School at Camp Pike, Arkansas. It was not to be foreseen yet, but the war would be over within three months. Sixteen days after the guns fell silent, John Vann was discharged from service.39

Vann was looking for a team in 1919. He went to spring camp with Waco, was traded to Dallas, then moved again in late June to the Shreveport Gassers. This time he got lucky. Baseball has always had a special place in its heart for old-fashioned rivalry, those hoarse, hard-fought games with local pride and bragging rights on the line. That was the Texas League split-season showdown of 1919. The Gassers were dark-horse winners of the league’s first half. They were serious underdogs against second-half winners Fort Worth. The playoff was to be best of seven. The trains and hotels were crowded, the stands were packed, the fans were primed to go wild. At home, Shreveport surprised Fort Worth in Game One, 7-2. Vann was one of the day’s heroes. “The Panthers were playing Vann for a bunt and the entire infield was drawn in in the expectation that Vann would lay one down. Instead, he drove a hit to right field on which both Brown and O’Neill scored.”40

Shreveport also won the second, but the games moved to Fort Worth and the Panthers rallied back. When they met on September 30, a Shreveport win would finish it. There ensued a classic 10-inning battle, called for darkness with the score 2-2. There were lots of heroics, but Vann was exorcising old demons. In the second inning, with one Fort Worth run already in, he killed a rally by throwing out a runner trying to steal second. In the seventh, score tied and bases loaded for a noisy Fort Worth, Vann caught a pop foul, ending that rally; in the ninth, with one on for Fort Worth, he did it again.

In the final game, with Fort Worth playing desperately, the Gassers were leading 6-0 into the seventh when their pitcher blew up. A walk and two singles loaded the bases, then another hit drove in two runs and Fort Worth was on a roll. By the time Gassers reliever Gus Bono put out the fire, it was 6-5 Gassers. That would be the final score, but here’s how close it came to going a different way: With Fort Worth catcher Larry Woodall on third in the seventh inning and one out, rally adrenaline was pulsing. The batter grounded toward third baseman Emmett Cain and it looked like a chance to Woodall: He sprinted for home. “Gathering in the ball, Cain made a quick throw to the plate to nip Woodall. Although the Fort Worth catcher came in full tilt, Vann did not yield an inch and put Woodall out on a close play.”41 The sportswriter added that the moment “ranked with the best of the many spectacular feats performed in the series.” The Shreveport sports pages were ebullient, in big bold type. Stories about that other series — the 1919 White Sox being shocked by Cincinnati in Game One – were pushed aside. 42 Vann batted .288 for the season, and .261 in the series, third best among starters; he had caught all seven games flawlessly. He had helped to bring Shreveport its first (and only) Texas League pennant. And that, the Shreveport Times crowed, was “the ‘world’s series’ in this part of the United States.” 43

And then came Ruth. It was the spring of 1921 and the Babe, just 26 years old, was the swaggering harbinger of the new era. In 1920 he hit 54 homers and batted .376. In 1921 the Yankees made Shreveport their spring camp – and when Babe arrived, throngs met the train and hundreds filled the Lions Club hall for the banquet and welcome speeches. 44 The real show, though, was at the ballpark, where the Yankees were to meet a series of opponents. One of Shreveport’s turns came on March 23. The fact that the Yankees won 8-2 was beside the point. Ruth went 3-for-4. His longest hit was to deep center, a high fly that was thrilling for an instant but caught. John Vann, in addition to his close-up look at Ruth, cracked a long triple off submariner Carl Mays, the best pitcher in the American League that year. 45

The Gassers finished fifth in the eight-team Texas League in 1921; Vann hit .260. He remained a fan favorite. In September of 1920, he had married a Shreveport woman, Grace Prothro. The entire team attended, and before the game they presented the newlyweds with a silver set. A year later, after a series in Beaumont, Vann hurried home to meet his new baby boy. He was going on 32, and his baseball life was changing.

In 1922 Vann’s numbers declined. The Gassers made a dismal start that year. At the end of May, venerable manager Billy Smith was fired. Vann, the senior player on the team, was handed the job. Personnel woes and health issues made the rest of the season a rolling crisis. (A dengue fever outbreak made road trips to Galveston cringe-worthy.) But Vann had the full-throated support of the local paper and managed to keep a promise not to finish last. Shreveport climbed to sixth place, but it was not enough. With no hard feelings, Vann did not return.46

In 1923 Vann played about half-time, splitting the season between the Little Rock Travelers and the Birmingham Barons of the Southern Association. His final three seasons were spent as playing manager of the Corsicana Oilers of the Class-D Texas Baseball Association. In 1924 Vann won the pennant but lost a showdown Lone Star Series to the Tyler Trojans, the powerful East Texas League champs. In 1925 he won the pennant again, this time over the Palestine Pals, but the Series was canceled over a schedule wrangle. Still, it was an interesting year: Under Vann’s management, a modestly successful pitcher named Smead Jolley was converted into a misadventure-prone outfielder who could play every day and hit .362. In 1926, with Jolley gone to the Pacific Coast League, Vann’s team finished fourth. He obviously still found the game fulfilling, but he was coaching, teaching teammates who were just out of high school. His own son was turning 5.

In 1926 Vann went home to Fairland. For a while he considered taking a majority interest in a team in Joplin, Missouri. He reported being a baseball scout for the 1930 Census.47 But this is the moment when he turned to his private business and ranch life that had always been running in the background; to wife and family (a son and a daughter). He seems in this way to have always lived a compartmentalized life. How else to explain his final profession: In 1934 Vann joined the Shreveport Police Detective Bureau. He retired from that work after 19 years. When he died in 1958, his final team – the entire Detective Bureau – stood for him as honorary pallbearers.48

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in Notes, the author consulted various sites under the auspices of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. https://americanindian.si.edu

In particular, see “Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations: Treaty with the Western Cherokee, 1828.”

https://americanindian.si.edu/nationtonation/treaty-with-the-western-cherokee.html

and “Why We Serve: Native Americans in the United States Armed Forces.”

https://americanindian.si.edu/why-we-serve/

Photo credit

Notes

1 “It was Ed Koney’s Day Off at Bat So Braves Broke Even with Cards,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 12, 1913: 17.

2 “Redding Returned to Cardinals; Vann Goes Back to Indianapolis,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 13, 1913: 14.

3 “Bees Show Pep in First Local Workout,” Salt Lake Telegram, March 30, 1916: 4.

4 “It Happened in Fanland,” Hartford Daily Courant, July 25, 1912: 18

5 F.C.L, “The Dictagraph,” Sioux City Journal, July 20, 1913: 10.

6 “A Fairland Star,” Fairland (Oklahoma) News-Herald, November 14, 1913: 1.

7 “Drawn from Archives of the Historical Society,” Daily Oklahoman (Oklahoma City), April 5, 1908: 21; “Three Cherokees Living Who Once Ruled as Chiefs,” Daily Oklahoman, June 22, 1919: 17.

8 “Cherokee People: Dealings with the Early United States,” https://www.britannica.com/topic/Cherokee-people.

9 “The Cherokee Nation: The History of the Cherokee Nation,” https://www.cherokee.org/about-the-nation/history/.

10 “Fairland 15 Years Ago,” Fairland News-Herald, April 25, 1913: 2.

11 “Six O’Clock Dinner at Vann’s,” Fairland News-Herald, July 4, 1913: 1.

12 “Dutch Vann Is Making Good,” Arkansas Democrat (Little Rock), June 25, 1910: 2.

13 “Collegian Fans Mighty Wagner,” Daily Arkansas Gazette (Little Rock), April 9, 1910: 8.

14 “Johnny Vann Visits Friends in City,” Springfield (Missouri) News-Leader, September 30, 1910: 10.

15 “Kraft and Eibel Put Thrills into Texas League; Panthers Well-Balanced Aggregation,” Shreveport (Louisiana) Times, October 2, 1921: 9.

16 “Removed to the Hospital” and “Mrs. Dillon Holt Dead,” Fairland News Herald, May 19, 1911: 1.

17 “Double-Header Is Stopped by Rain,” Hartford Daily Courant, August 22, 1912: 16.

18 “Vandalia Bridge Goes Down with a Roar; White River Flood Is Receding Slowly; Bitter Gale Brings Intense Suffering to Refugees,” Indianapolis Star, March 27, 1913: 1.

19 “Indian Refugees Find More Rain at Chicago,” Indianapolis News, April 4, 1913: 20.

20 “Cubs Again Down Hoosier Nine, 7-3,” Chicago Tribune, April 7, 1913: 17.

21 “Sol Meyer Sees Indians Beaten,” Indianapolis Star, April 7, 1913: 8.

22 John Vann entry, baseball-reference.com, https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=vann–001joh.

23 “Story of Indians’ Defeat in Final Contest on Road,” Indianapolis Star, April 23, 1913: 8.

24 “Vaughan Holds ’Em in Rubber of Series,” Indianapolis Star, June 15, 1913: 25.

25 “Sioux Fielding Improved,” Sioux City Journal, July 20, 1913: 11.

26 “Final Western League Averages,” Sioux City Journal, October 12, 1913: 11.

27 “Holderman Leads League,” Fort Wayne (Indiana) Daily News, September 22, 1914: 4.

28 “Tots in Demand,” Indianapolis Star, January 26, 1916: 10.

29 “Diamond Dust,” Salt Lake Telegram, April 2, 1916: 8.

30 “Coast Batting Averages” and “Utes Must Let Out Player to Cut Down List,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, August 1, 1916: 8.

31 “Goodbye Baseball; Players Scatter,” Oakland Tribune, October 30, 1916: 10.

32 “American Indians Star on Diamond,” Los Angeles Evening Herald, February 1, 1915: 6.

33 “Polar Cubs Beat Indianapolis, 2-1,” Chicago Tribune, April 4, 1914: 15; “Indians Lose by 2-1 Score,” Indianapolis Star, April 4, 1914: 8.

34 SABR’s Negro Leagues Research Committee and its annual Jerry Malloy Negro League Conference. https://sabr.org/research/negro-leagues-research-committee/, https://sabr.org/malloy.

35 “Stars and A.B.C.s in a Drawn Battle,” Indianapolis Star, October 4, 1915: 8.

36 “Large Crowd Sees Bush’s Stars Win,” Indianapolis Star, October 11, 1915: 12.

37 “Race Riot Is Balked By Police,” Indianapolis Star, October 25, 1915: 1

38 “Scrappy Game Ends 1915 Baseball Season,” Indianapolis News, October 25, 1915: 12.

39 Native American Soldiers in World War I, National Archives: https://visit.archives.gov/whats-on/explore-exhibits/honoring-native-american-soldiers-world-war-i-service. John Vann’s service records assembled with the assistance of Erin Fehr, assistant director of the Modern Warriors of World War I database at the Sequoyah National Research Center, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. https://ualr.edu/sequoyah/wwi/.

40 “Gassers’ Easy Victory in First Game of Series Lowers Morale of Chesty Atzmen,” Shreveport Journal, September 25, 1919: 7.

41 “Panthers Give Gasmen Real Scare But Bono Checks Rally In Time to Save ’19 Pennant,” Shreveport Journal, October 2, 1919: 7.

42 “Shreveport Fans Delirious with Joy as Gasmen Give City First Baseball Pennant”; “Victory in First Game Gives Cincinnati New Confidence; White Sox Not Discouraged,” Shreveport Journal, October 2, 1919: 7.

43 “Shreveport Wins Texas League Flag,” Shreveport Times, October 2, 1919: 1.

44 “Hope We Can Come Back Every Year,’ Ruth Tells Lions,” Shreveport Journal, March 21, 1921: 7.

45 “Massey’s Homer Saves Gassers from Shutout,” Shreveport Journal, March 24, 1921: 7.

46 “Club Owners May Shake-Up Pilots in 5 T.L. Cities,” Shreveport Journal, September 14, 1922: 8.

47 Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930: Ottawa County (Council House Loop), Oklahoma. John Vann.

48 ”Detective Here 19 Years Dies,” Shreveport Journal, June 10, 1958: 1.