Louis Sockalexis

Louis Sockalexis, a member of the Penobscot Indian tribe of Maine, played in only 94 major-league games, but is remembered today as the first Native American, and first recognized minority, to perform in the National League.1 He was signed by the Cleveland Spiders in 1897, 50 years before Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Sockalexis, like Robinson a multitalented athlete who excelled in football and track as well as baseball, appeared destined for stardom, but alcoholism derailed his promising career. He is, however, at least indirectly responsible for the nickname “Indians” as formerly applied to the present American League team in Cleveland.

Louis Francis Sockalexis was born on the Penobscot reservation on Indian Island, near Old Town, Maine, on October 24, 1871. He was the son of Francis Sockalexis, a logger who later served as governor (formerly called “chief”) of the Penobscot, and the former Frances Sockbeson. The Penobscot valued athletic prowess, and Francis Sockalexis was a fine athlete. But Louis, who grew to be nearly 6-feet tall with straight black hair and a muscular build, became the best athlete in the tribe. As a teenager, Louis won footraces and throwing contests against all challengers, and his natural baseball ability led him to play semipro ball for various teams in Maine during his late teens and early 20s.

In 1894, after playing college ball at Ricker Classical Institute in Maine, Louis spent the summer at a seaside resort, patrolling the outfield for a baseball nine sponsored by the Poland Spring Hotel. One of his teammates was Mike “Doc” Powers, a future major leaguer who, at the time, was the captain of the baseball team at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. Powers was impressed with Sockalexis’s talent, and persuaded Louis, a Catholic, to enroll at the Jesuit-run institution. This he did in the fall of that year.

Louis excelled on the diamond at Holy Cross, batting .436 in 1895 and .444 in 1896, and also starred as a running back on the school’s first football team, in the fall of 1896. He ran track, specializing in the medium and long distances and reportedly winning five events in a single meet. However, it was as a baseball player that he shone most brightly. In 1895 an incredible throw he made against Harvard one day from deep center field to the plate was measured by a group of professors at 414 feet, an unofficial national record at the time. A few weeks later, he belted two home runs and stole six bases against Brown University. Legend has it that one of Sockalexis’s homers shattered a fourth-floor window in a dormitory behind the right-field fence.

Sockalexis may have been the best college player in the country, and began to draw interest from National League clubs. The Cleveland Spiders had the inside track, as two members of that team, outfielder Jesse Burkett and infielder James “Chippy” McGarr, coached for Holy Cross during the spring months. Louis took hitting tips from Burkett, the two-time league batting champion, and looked forward to the day when he would compete at baseball’s highest level.

In December 1896, Sockalexis and Mike Powers left Holy Cross and enrolled at Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana. Burkett and McGarr had recommended that the Cleveland team sign both Sockalexis and Powers, so in early 1897 Patsy Tebeau, manager of the Spiders, traveled to Indiana to acquire the two players. Powers turned Tebeau down, but on March 9, 1897, Tebeau signed Sockalexis to a contract. He agreed to report to the Cleveland club at the conclusion of the college season.

Sockalexis stayed at Notre Dame for only a few months, and never played baseball for the school. In March of 1897, he and another student were expelled from the college after a drunken disturbance at a local tavern. He then boarded an eastbound train and showed up, unannounced, at the Spiders’ spring practice at an indoor gymnasium in Cleveland on March 19, 1897. Tebeau, who was surprised to see Sockalexis so soon, was impressed with the Native American ballplayer, and the local sportswriters were so enamored of the exotic newcomer that a headline in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on March 20 referred to the team as “Tebeau’s Indians.” By the end of the month, the Spiders’ moniker was virtually forgotten, and the Cleveland club became the Indians. A few days later, the Cleveland Leader stated, “With four first-class outfielders, five infielders, eight pitchers, and four catchers, the ‘Indians’ of 1897 would seem as well equipped to start out for a pennant as any team in the League.”2

The 25-year-old Sockalexis (who told the club that he was 23) arrived at practice in top condition. Despite his muscular build, he easily defeated all his new teammates in footraces. Tebeau organized handball contests to keep his players active, and Sockalexis had no trouble winning all his matches. He also displayed his talent at gymnastics. “Sockalexis, who is quite a gymnast, occasionally breaks out with some caper that would tear the ordinary man in two,” reported the Plain Dealer. “Those things are all right in a circus, Louie,” said Tebeau, “but you don’t need ’em to win ball games.”3 In Sporting Life, former New York Giants manager John Ward, who saw the Penobscot star perform at Holy Cross, declared, “I have seen [Sockalexis] play perhaps a dozen games, and I unhesitatingly pronounce him a wonder. Why he has not been snapped up before by some League club looking for a sensational player is beyond my comprehension.”4

The Spiders played their first intrasquad game on April 2. Tebeau divided the team into the “Indians” and the “Papooses,” and Sockalexis, batting cleanup for the Indians, drilled three hits, scored three runs, and threw a runner out at the plate from deep right field. He kept up his fine hitting and outfield play, making a strong challenge for the starting right-field spot for the newly christened Indians. The national press began to notice Sockalexis, as Charles W. Mears explained in The Sporting News:

“Everybody in Cleveland as well as in other league cities, for that matter, are talking Sockalexis, and if the young Indian isn’t the best advertised new man that ever entered the big organization then it will not be the fault of the baseball paragraphers of the press. They have discovered a novelty in it. The newspaper talk concerning the youngster has stirred up great local interest in the Red Man, and of all the young players on the Cleveland Club’s list he is the most talked of, and it will be his appearance that will draw the greatest number of curious people at the opening of the season.”5

The newly named Indians knew that the Native American would draw plenty of attention, but they also saw Sockalexis as the answer to their long-standing problem in right field. The team had finished in second place in the National League in both 1895 and 1896, and many believed that it needed one more strong bat to finally win a pennant. The incumbent right fielder, Harry Blake, was an outstanding fielder but a weak hitter, and Tebeau gave Sockalexis every chance to supplant Blake in Cleveland’s lineup.

Louis Sockalexis went hitless in his major-league debut, a 3-1 loss to the Colonels in Louisville, but singled twice and drove in two runs two days later in a 9-4 loss. The Indians then traveled to Cincinnati, where he belted two singles and a double as the fans cheered the newcomer with war whoops. The Cleveland club lost its first five games of 1897, but Sockalexis looked like a future star. The Indians finally broke into the win column on April 30, when he smashed a homer, the first of his career, against the Browns in St. Louis. Some of the fans claimed that the four-bagger, a high fly ball that easily cleared the right-field fence, was the longest they had ever seen in the city. On May 1, in another win against the Browns, he hit three singles and broke up the game with a bases-loaded triple in the ninth. He also thrilled the fans with long, running catches and powerful throws from the outfield.

Sockalexis lived up to his billing during the early months of the 1897 campaign. He hit his second home run, another long shot over the right field fence, against the Reds on May 5. After 20 games, his batting average stood at .372, and his presence in the lineup increased attendance both at Cleveland’s League Park and on the road. He was a sensation, though many fans bought tickets to jeer at the first Native American ballplayer in major-league history. “Columns of silly poetry are written about him, [and] hideous looking cartoons adorn the sporting pages of nearly every paper,” commented Elmer Bates in Sporting Life. “He is hooted and bawled at by the thimble-brained brigade on the bleachers. Despite all this handicap the red man has played good, steady ball, and has been a factor in nearly every victory thus far won by Tebeau’s team.”6

On May 13 Sockalexis belted a double and a triple off Boston’s best pitcher, 30-game winner Kid Nichols, but the Indians lost the game by a 4-1 score. Sockalexis had trouble hitting curveballs from left-handers, and sometimes found it difficult to judge balls hit directly at him in right field. He also showed poor command of the strike zone and swung at balls in the dirt or above his head. But Patsy Tebeau expressed confidence that the rookie would correct his faults and become a more complete ballplayer. “He is a sensible fellow and sees his weakness, which is a good trait in a young player,” said the manager.7

Perhaps the high point of Sockalexis’s season, and of his career, came at the Polo Grounds on June 16, when he faced New York’s strikeout champion Amos Rusie in the first contest of a four-game series. While more than 4,500 fans hooted and made Indian war cries at the Cleveland rookie, Sockalexis stepped into the box against Rusie in the first inning. He swung and missed at a Rusie fastball, spinning himself around, and before Sockalexis could get set, Rusie let fly with another fastball. Sockalexis made a “wild stab” at it, according to the next day’s report in the New York World, and sent a liner to the outfield that split the gap in right-center field and rolled to the wall. By the time right fielder Mike Tiernan could retrieve the ball, Sockalexis had sped around the bases for a home run, his third of the season. He struck out in his next appearance, and misplayed a line drive hit by Tiernan for a three-base error later in the game, but Cleveland coasted to a 7-2 victory.

However, Sockalexis brought a drinking problem with him to the major leagues, and on July 3, disaster struck. He went out on the town in Cleveland that Saturday evening, and drank what onlookers recalled as a prodigious amount of alcohol. Sometime during the wee hours, Sockalexis either jumped or fell out of a second-story window, severely spraining his ankle. He managed to hide the injury from his manager and teammates on Sunday, an offday for the Indians, but when he showed up at the ballpark in Pittsburgh for a doubleheader on Monday, July 5, he was limping noticeably. Patsy Tebeau pulled him from the lineup and sent him back to Cleveland to have his injury treated. A physician put his ankle in a cast and ordered him to bed, but Sockalexis reportedly spent the next several evenings in the local bars while his teammates carried on in Pittsburgh.

Sockalexis returned to the lineup on July 8, and although he was still limping, he hit well for the next few days. He suffered an embarrassing relapse four days later, when the league-leading Boston Beaneaters came to League Park. Sockalexis dropped a fly ball in the first inning, then let Fred Tenney’s grounder get through his legs for a three-base error in the fifth. Two batters later, Jimmy Collins swatted a liner to right that Sockalexis did not appear to notice right away. It went for an inside-the-park home run, and the fuming Tebeau yanked the rookie from the game. Sockalexis was most likely intoxicated on the field, and his alcohol problem was now public knowledge, in Cleveland and around the league.

Sockalexis was losing his battle with alcoholism, and on July 29, when the Indians departed on a Western trip, he did not accompany them. He had been suspended without pay by team owner Frank Robison. “I think I can truthfully say,” the owner told The Sporting News, “that I have done everything I could for Sockalexis, and he has repaid me, and the Cleveland club, by the basest ingratitude. I have waited as long as I could, and have given him every chance to do what is right, and only punished him when I felt that I must do so in justice to myself and the rest of the club.”8 Sockalexis expressed remorse for his actions, and although Tebeau left him behind on another road trip in late August, the rookie appeared to be sincere in changing his behavior. He played little in August and September, however, and ended his rookie season with a .338 average and 16 stolen bases in 66 games.

Though Sockalexis was arrested for public intoxication in September while his teammates were on the road, and spent a night in jail, Tebeau was not yet ready to give up on the talented athlete. He had played well, sometimes sensationally, when sober, and might yet prove to be a valuable player. Also, the Cleveland team suffered from poor fan support during the 1890s, finishing either last or next to last in the National League in attendance during each of the previous four years despite a string of winning seasons. A healthy and focused Sockalexis might still become the drawing card that the team needed.

Sockalexis told the papers that he kept out of trouble all winter. But in March of 1898, when Tebeau’s team gathered in Cleveland for the journey to spring training in Hot Springs, Arkansas, Sockalexis fell off the wagon again. He missed the train to Hot Springs, much to Tebeau’s disgust. “It’s a pity [Sockalexis] doesn’t keep straight,” sighed Tebeau to the writers on the train.  “If I can keep him in line this year he will strengthen us to a great degree. However, it looks as though Blake would start the season covering right field.”9

The troubled outfielder arrived at Hot Springs two days later and immediately went in for a one-on-one talk with his disappointed manager. Sockalexis, to his credit, was honest about his behavior. “I did it again, Cap,” he said sadly. “A crowd got hold of me and before I knew it they had loaded me. I had not taken a drop in so long that I did not know my capacity, and before I knew it they had me. I am through for good now. My friends in Cleveland are my worst enemies, I fear, even though they don’t mean to be. After this I will defy anybody to get me started.”10   

Sockalexis had promised to stay out of trouble several times before, but with the right-field situation unsettled, Tebeau elected to believe him, at least for the moment. However, the Plain Dealer commented, “it is a known fact that the club will stand no more foolishness from Sockalexis. One more slip and he will be suspended, just as sure as there is a rule to provide for such suspension. … [T]here are too many good outfielders to put the club in any seriously embarrassing position by the suspension of one, and the rest are all conscientious workers.”11

Although Sockalexis appeared to stay sober thereafter, he hit poorly in spring training and lost his starting position in right field to Harry Blake. He spent most of the season on the bench, appearing in only 21 games and batting .224. He played right field in a July 4 doubleheader in Chicago when Blake was called away by a family emergency, but Sockalexis hit only two singles in the two games. Worse, the Chicago fans entertained themselves by making derisive war whoops and yells, and by throwing firecrackers at him in the outfield. At times during the second game, Sockalexis could barely see the infield because of the cloud of blue smoke at his feet. He played the next two games and went hitless, and took to the bench again when Blake returned.

In August Tebeau sent Sockalexis to Mansfield of the Interstate League, though it appears he played in only one game there before returning to Cleveland. The Cleveland club, now known again as the Spiders with the decline of Sockalexis, played 39 of its last 42 games on the road, shifting many of its home games to other cities due to poor attendance at League Park. Because Tebeau did not trust his troublesome outfielder, he left him behind during the team’s extended road trip in September and October.

Sockalexis spent the winter of 1898-99 in Cleveland, though he returned to Maine when his mother, Frances, died in February of 1899. But Sockalexis did not take care of himself during the offseason, and perhaps his mother’s death sent him off the deep end once again. He surfaced in Cleveland in early March, but was so overweight and out of shape that Tebeau refused to take him to the training camp in Hot Springs.

At the same time, weak fan support and boardroom turmoil among the National League club owners threatened the future of baseball in Cleveland. Frank Robison was tired of losing money in Cleveland, so in early 1899 he bought the St. Louis Browns and transferred all the Spiders stars (including Tebeau, Cy Young, Bobby Wallace, Jesse Burkett, and more) to the Mound City. Robison now owned franchises in both St. Louis and Cleveland, and rather than fold the Spiders, he decided to operate the Cleveland club on a shoestring. Tebeau had finally given up on Sockalexis, who was not invited to join the exodus to St. Louis. Instead, he remained in Cleveland with what historian Lee Allen called “the sorriest shell of a team ever seen in the major leagues,”12 on a roster filled with rejects, prospects, and semipro players.

The 1899 edition of the Spiders proved to be the last chance for Louis Sockalexis. He told the local newspapers that he was sober and ready to play, but his appearance proved otherwise. Sockalexis, once so athletic and muscular, now weighed over 200 pounds and was “big as an alderman,” in the words of teammate Dick Harley. Said the 38-year-old catcher Chief Zimmer, “I can give him twenty yards and beat him in a hundred. … You would not know the big Indian if you saw him now.”13

The new manager of the talent-poor Spiders, third baseman Lave Cross, nonetheless put Sockalexis on the roster and hoped for the best, though he left Sockalexis at home in Cleveland during the team’s season-opening road trip to St. Louis, Louisville, and Cincinnati. Not until May 1, during the second game of a doubleheader against Louisville at Cleveland’s League Park, did Sockalexis make an appearance. He struck out in a pinch-hitting assignment.

He made his first start in right field on May 9 and managed a single against Cy Young in an 8-1 loss to St. Louis, but the next day Sockalexis appeared to be daydreaming on the field. Standing on third base, he got such a slow start on a clean single to the outfield that he was thrown out at home. He also allowed several fly balls to fall safely for hits, though he was charged with no errors. Although the Plain Dealer reported that “the big Indian seems to have come to his senses at last, and is doing his best to get back to his old-time form,”14 it was obvious that Sockalexis was in no condition to play.

His last hurrah came on May 11. He belted five hits – four doubles and a single – against St. Louis and made an incredible throw from the outfield to retire a runner at third. But he also dropped two easy flies in right and was thrown out by a wide margin in a botched double steal. Two days later in Pittsburgh, Sockalexis went hitless and fell down twice in the outfield while fielding groundballs. Despite his claims to the contrary, it appeared that he was drunk on the field. A few days later, Sockalexis got into a drunken dispute at a theater in downtown Cleveland and spent the night in jail. The Spiders released him the next day, and his major-league career was over. He was dismissed after only seven games with the worst team in baseball history, as the hapless Spiders won only 20 of their 154 games in 1899.

Billy Barnie, manager of the Hartford club of the Eastern League, quickly signed the Penobscot as a gate attraction, but Sockalexis did not last long. He was overweight and painfully slow both on the bases and in the field, and most of his hits were weak singles. He batted only .198 in 24 games and drew his release after dropping an easy fly ball to lose a game. He then played for Waterbury and Bristol in the Connecticut State League. On this much lower level of competition, Sockalexis found his footing, batting .320 in 61 games and apparently keeping his drinking under control.

However, although the Waterbury club was interested in retaining him for the following season, Sockalexis was nowhere to be found when the spring of 1900 rolled around. A series of news reports during the next two years detailed several arrests for public drunkenness and disturbances, and it appears that the former baseball star was reduced to homelessness and vagrancy. He spent several short terms in jail during this period, and remained out of the game until 1902, when he signed with Lowell of the New England League. Now 30 years old, Sockalexis hit for a credible .288 average, though he still had problems in the field. He committed 29 errors that season, and his fielding percentage of .800 was one of the worst in all of organized ball. Nevertheless, he lasted the entire season for Lowell, and it appeared that his drinking days were finally behind him. He didn’t return to Lowell for 1903, preferring to stay closer to his home in Maine, but at least he cemented a moderately successful return to the professional ranks.

Louis Sockalexis wound up back on the Penobscot reservation in Maine, and except for a stint with Bangor in the Maine State League in 1907, he never again played professional ball. He played for local town teams, served as an umpire for semipro games, and taught the game to young tribesmen. He piloted a ferryboat between Indian Island, home of the reservation, and the mainland, and enjoyed reading copies of The Sporting News and other papers that his passengers left behind. Although he had apparently stopped drinking to excess, he was not healthy, and caught colds and fevers easily. He also suffered from attacks of rheumatism, and appeared much older than his years.

In the fall of 1913, Sockalexis joined a logging crew that harvested trees deep in the Maine woods. While cutting down a massive pine tree on December 24 of that year, he suffered a heart attack and died at the age of 42. He was buried in the cemetery on the Penobscot reservation.

Ed McKean, the longtime Cleveland shortstop, paid tribute to his former teammate in an interview with the Cleveland Leader. “He was a wild bird,” said McKean. “He couldn’t lose his taste for firewater. His periodical departures became such a habit [that] he finally slipped out of the majors. He had more natural ability than any player I have ever seen, past or present.”15

Cleveland’s American League team (which began play in 1900) had been called the Naps in honor of playing manager Napoleon Lajoie, but when Lajoie left the team after the 1914 season, a new nickname was in order. In January 1915, team owner Charles Somers, after consulting with several local sportswriters, decided to revive the name that had defined the city’s National League club 18 years before. Somers, perhaps recalling the all-too-brief period of excitement that Louis Sockalexis had brought to Cleveland in 1897, dubbed his team the Indians, a name that remained for 107 years.

Though his career was short, Louis Sockalexis is remembered today while other great players of the 1890s are long forgotten. Sockalexis, directly or indirectly, inspired the nickname of the Cleveland baseball team. His athletic feats have been honored by many different organizations.  The great Penobscot athlete was elected to the Holy Cross Athletic Hall of Fame in 1956, the Maine Baseball Hall of Fame in 1969, and the Maine Sports Hall of Fame in 1985. In April 2000 he was inducted into the American Indian Athletic Hall of Fame.

He is not eligible for induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, because he played in the National League for only three seasons, and Hall of Fame candidates are required to have played in all or part of 10 major-league campaigns. Had he managed to stay away from alcohol, Louis Sockalexis might well have joined his Cleveland teammates Cy Young, Bobby Wallace, and Jesse Burkett in Cooperstown. Nonetheless, he has earned his place in baseball history. He is remembered not only as the original Cleveland Indian and as the first recognized Native American to play in the major leagues, but also as one of the greatest “might-have-beens” in the annals of the game. 

Sources 

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author drew on two books:

Fleitz, David L. Louis Sockalexis: The First Cleveland Indian (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2002).

Phillips, John. Chief Sockalexis and the 1897 Cleveland Indians (Cabin John, Maryland: Capital Publishing, 1991).

Photo credit: Louis Sockalexis, National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.

Notes

1 Several players with partial Native American ancestry had previously played in the National League, but Sockalexis was the first full-fledged member of a tribe, and the first recognized minority, to do so. The Penobscot Indian Nation lists Sockalexis in its records as a “full-blooded” Penobscot.

2 “Like a Sphinx,” Cleveland Leader, March 23, 1897: 3.

3 “At the ‘Gym,’” Cleveland Plain Dealer, March 26, 1897: 3.

4 Elmer Bates, “Cleveland Chatter,” Sporting Life, March 27, 1897: 3.

5 Charles W. Mears, “Good Drawing Card,” The Sporting News, April 24, 1897: 3.

6 Elmer Bates, “Cleveland Chatter,” Sporting Life, May 15, 1897: 5.

7 “Baseball Notes,” Washington Post, June 9, 1897: 8.

8 “Fined and Suspended,” The Sporting News, August 7, 1897: 6.

9 “Going South,” The Sporting News, March 12, 1898: 4.

10 “Home Training,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, March 14, 1898: 6.

11 “Hot Work,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, March 11, 1898: 6.

12 Lee Allen, The National League Story (New York: Hill and Wang, 1961), 79.

13 “Caught on the Fly,” The Sporting News, May 27, 1899: 5.

14 “A Warm Welcome,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 10, 1899: 6.

15 Bob Dolgan, “Sockalexis a Tragic Figure,” Cleveland Plaine Dealer, April 24, 2000: 1D.