Roy Leslie

Roy Leslie set a professional baseball season record with 73 doubles in 1924 for the Salt Lake Bees of the Class AA Pacific Coast League.1 The next season, Leslie nestled into the lineup on most days in the rarefied Utah air between 60-homer Tony Lazzeri and 309-hit Lefty O’Doul. These PCL years were the highlights of Leslie’s baseball career, following short stints with the 1917 Chicago Cubs and 1919 St. Louis Cardinals as well as his lone full major-league season on a poor 1922 Philadelphia Phillies squad. Leslie eventually became a lumber and grocery store proprietor in his home state of Texas.

Roy Reid Leslie was born August 23, 1894, in Bailey, Texas, the youngest of eight children born to John T. Leslie, an Arkansas-born farmer, and Lucy H. (Fenner) Leslie, born in Mississippi. John died when Roy was only seven years old, with Lucy remarrying in 1917. Brother Samuel Fenner Leslie played catcher for the University of Texas in the early 1900s; he served as team captain in 1901 and 1902, plus played halfback on the football squad. He also played in the minors in the early part of the decade before becoming a judge. Another brother, Hugh, played semipro ball as a catcher before becoming a bank president. Still another brother, Claude, also played professional ball and managed the local Bonham Tigers of the Class D Texas-Oklahoma League in 1912-1913. In 1913, young Roy played seven games for his brother, including some time at shortstop. Roy started the next year as the first baseman with the Ardmore (Oklahoma) Indians, still in the TXOK League, before moving to the Ennis Tigers of the Class D Central Texas League in May. He remained in 1915 with Ennis, which won the first half, and led the Central Texas League with seven home runs and 64 hits.2 However, the league disbanded in late July.

The Central Texas League re-formed for 1916, and Leslie hit .358 in 45 games for Ennis while playing first base and occasionally as a relief pitcher.3 By mid-July, the right-handed hitter and thrower was purchased, through the efforts of scout Mike Finn, by the Detroit Tigers,4 who farmed Leslie to the Fort Worth Panthers of the Class B Texas League. However, Fort Worth manager Otto McIvor was loathe to give up the first base bag and place himself in the outfield, so Leslie didn’t get a true opportunity.5 In Leslie’s only game, he went hitless in three at-bats. Leslie was soon deemed “a little green for this company”6 and was sold to the Waco Navigators, also in the TL, who grabbed the “tow-headed” (blonde) Leslie in August for their successful pennant drive.7 He hit .239 for Waco.8 Leslie capped an eventful September by marrying Nina Belle Johnson in Fannin, Texas.

Leslie led the Texas League with 18 homers in 1917 for Waco, eight more than anyone else.9 In July, Leslie was purchased by the Chicago Cubs for delivery after the Waco season. Leslie debuted with the Cubs on September 6 against the St. Louis Cardinals, collecting his first major league hit off Bill Doak, when Leslie “dropped his Texas Leaguer into center.”10 Leslie didn’t play again for 11 days. His Chicago season highlight occurred on September 26, when he hit a game-winning RBI single off Brooklyn’s Rube Marquard in the sixth inning in support of Harry Weaver’s 1-0 win, in front of a mere 650 fans. It was Leslie’s only RBI as a Cub, as he finished 4-for-19 (.211) in sporadic final-month duty for the fifth-place squad.

Leslie’s war draft registration that fall listed him as a married merchant living in Waco. Chicago returned Leslie to the Waco club for the 1918 season, where he batted .260 in 88 games, although the Texas League suspended operations July 7. Leslie attended Waco’s training camp in March 1919, so it seems doubtful that he actively served in the war. Leslie went on to form a hard-hitting combo with Johnny Mokan that season. By August, Waco sold Leslie to his second major league organization, the St. Louis Cardinals, for four players, including first baseman Mike Pasquella.11 Leslie served as a temporary backup for Jack “Dots” Miller.12 However, after committing errors in each of his first three games and batting .208 (5-for-24), Leslie was returned to the Texas League, as the Cardinals purchased first baseman Fritz Mollwitz. Leslie was sold to the Houston Buffaloes, not Waco. He still tied for the Texas League lead in homers with 16, even after missing a month.

Roy and Nina welcomed son Roy Reid Leslie Jr. in 1919. The family lived in Bailey, in Fannin County. Roy Sr. experienced blood poisoning during Houston’s camp in April 1920 from a wound to his heel.13 Regardless, he hit .279 over 145 games for the Buffaloes. After the season, Leslie was traded by Houston to the New Orleans Pelicans of the Southern Association for Clyde Barfoot.

Leslie hit a robust .321 with 40 doubles and 16 triples in 156 games for New Orleans in 1921. He went 6-for-6 against Chattanooga on July 7.14 Rumors swirled that Leslie would soon join the Brooklyn Robins, but that didn’t transpire.15 After the season, he was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies for Snake Henry and John Monroe, and was slotted to replace the departed Ed Konetchy as the starting first baseman.16

The preseason report coming out of camp in Leesburg, Florida, was that Leslie “is a neat fielder, particularly on low throws, but evidently weak at bat if a pitcher keeps the ball around the knees.”17 Leslie started 139 of 154 games for manager Kaiser Wilhelm and hit .271 for the seventh-place Phillies, even while missing the better part of two weeks in late July and early August due to a badly sprained back.18 He had an eight-game hitting streak in April and a 10-game hitting streak in September. He was identified in Sporting Life, along with Rogers Hornsby, Topper Rigney, and Danny Clark, as prominent major league infielders hailing from Texas.19 Nonetheless, Leslie’s batting and fielding were considered below league-average so, after the 1922 season, Philadelphia acquired first-sacker Walter Holke from the Boston Braves, making Leslie expendable. Philadelphia soon sent Leslie, pitcher John Singleton, catcher John Peters, and infielder Jimmy Smith to the Salt Lake Bees of the Class AA Pacific Coast League for shortstop Heine Sand. Leslie never returned to the major leagues.

Leslie opened his PCL career for Salt Lake with two home runs in his debut at home against Portland.20 He stayed hot the entire season for manager Duffy Lewis, as he hit .340 in 194 games with the Bees. His 140 RBIs were good for second in the league, behind the incredible 187 from teammate Paul Strand, who had moved from first base to the outfield for the campaign to accommodate Leslie. Leslie collected 260 hits, including 70 doubles, which surpassed the previous league record of 67 held jointly by Joe Gedeon and Paddy Siglin. Unfortunately for Leslie, teammate Les Sheehan tallied 72 doubles and Ross “Brick” Eldred of the Seattle Indians had 71, so Leslie’s league total was good for only third-best on the season.21 (Season totals in the PCL were inflated due to their uncommonly long schedules, with many teams playing at least 200 games in the years from 1922 through 1926.) Leslie continued a line of successful Bees first-sackers starting in the mid-1910s and continuing into the early 1920s, following Bunny Brief, Earl Sheely, and Strand.22

The next season for the Bees, Leslie hit .339 in 195 games and set an organized baseball season record with 73 doubles, bettering Sheehan’s mark from the previous season by one. Salt Lake repeated its fifth-place finish.

Ozzie Vitt took over as manager of Salt Lake for 1925 and penciled in Leslie on the lineup card between shortstop Tony Lazzeri and outfielder Lefty O’Doul. “Slug” Leslie was knocked unconscious and suffered a broken arm May 13 against Los Angeles when he fell headlong into the concrete dugout while trying to catch a foul.23 He missed six weeks of action, replaced by Fritz Coumbe. Nonetheless, Leslie hit .305 in 101 games for the impressive Bees, who finished in second place to the pennant-winning San Francisco Seals. The Seals’ Paul Waner established a new professional record for doubles with 75, eclipsing Leslie’s mark which had held for just one year.

For 1926, citing traveling challenges and the paucity of the Utah market, Salt Lake Bees owner Bill Lane moved the franchise to Hollywood, California, and renamed it the Stars.24 Leslie slumped to .258 in 119 games in his one year in Tinseltown, but he led the league in fielding at .992.25 Lane sold Leslie to the San Antonio Bears of the now-Class A Texas League before the 1927 season, but only after Leslie had driven all the way out West for the Stars’ spring training.26 Leslie hit a disappointing .261 with little power for San Antonio. After the season, San Antonio sold Leslie to the Omaha Crickets of the Western League.27

Omaha owner Barney Burch released Leslie in March. Roy quickly signed to manage and play for the Mexia Gushers in the Lone Star League. The appointment didn’t last long. Leslie engaged in a fistfight with umpire Adolph Ruth on May 19 in a 2-1 loss to Corsicana.28 Leslie soon quit, only to return roughly a week later. In his last professional engagement, in 1929, Leslie signed up as player-manager for the Tyler Trojans in the LSL, but the league disbanded after just three weeks.29 He later played and managed a semipro team in Bailey in 1931, when he faced a young John Whitehead of Ector (Texas) as one of the opposing pitchers before helping Whitehead sign with Dallas of the Texas League.30

Leslie retreated to Fannin County, Texas, and focused on farming. The family welcomed daughter Nancy Lou in 1930. By 1940, Leslie was a bookkeeper at a Fannin County cotton mill, with Roy Jr. employed at the same location as a truck driver. Roy Sr. later ran a lumber and grocery store in Bailey, and was an avid fisherman and quail hunter. He also served as a scout for the Chicago White Sox until 1960.

Roy Leslie Sr. died of a heart attack April 9, 1972, in Sherman, Texas, at the age of 77.31 He is buried at Arledge Ridge Cemetery in Bailey, Texas.

Acknowledgments

This biography was reviewed by Bill Lamb and Mike Eisenbath and fact-checked by Paul Proia.

Sources

In addition to the sources shown in the Notes, the author used Baseball-Reference.com, StatsCrew.com, and MyHeritage.com.

Notes

1 This broke the record of 72 set by Lee Sheehan, also of the Salt Lake Bees, a year prior. Leslie’s record would be broken the very next season, in 1925, by another PCL player, Paul Waner of the San Francisco Seals, with 75 doubles. See Dennis Snelling, The Pacific Coast League: A Statistical History, 1903-1957 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 1995), 336.

2 “Summary of Central Texas Averages,” Corsicana (Texas) Daily Sun, August 9, 1915: 7.

3 “Roy Leslie’s Record,” Waxahachie (Texas) Daily Light, July 17, 1916: 4.

4 “Finn Buys Leslie from Ennis,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, July 12, 1916: 12.

5 “Kike’s Komment,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, July 18, 1916: 10.

6 “Kike’s Komment,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, July 22, 1916: 3.

7 “Sporting Comment,” Waco (Texas) Morning News, August 11, 1916: 8.

8 “Bittle Shows Way to Texas Hitters; Stow Best Thief,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, September 24, 1916: 35.

9 “James of Waco Hitting Leader of Texas League This Season,” El Paso Herald, July 11, 1917: 9.

10 “Cardinals Mix Hits with Cub Errors in Fourth Inning and Win, 4 to 3,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, September 7, 1917: 6.

11 “Leslie Sold to Cardinals,” San Antonio Evening News, August 2, 1919: 12.

12 “Leslie, Sub First Sacker, Is Bought by the Cardinals,” St. Louis Star and Times, August 2, 1919: 10.

13 “Houston Is in Bad Shape for Opening,” Fort Worth Record-Telegram, April 13, 1920: 9.

14 Roy Leslie Sets New Swat Record for the Southern,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 10, 1921: 44.

15 “New Orleans Players to Report to Brooklyn Club,” Standard Union (Brooklyn, New York), July 6, 1921: 12.

16 “This Is Roy Leslie, Who Succeeds Konetchy as Phils’ First Sacker,” Philadelphia Inquirer, January 23, 1922: 12; “Big Leagues Hang Can on Ed Konetchy,” Record News (Wichita Falls, Texas), January 19, 1922: 6; “Phillies Complete Deal for Leslie, New Orleans Club,” Hartford (Connecticut) Courant, January 1, 1922: 35.

17 Irving Vaughan, “Phillies are Ambitious, but Lack Ability,” Buffalo Express, March 24, 1922: 16.

18 “Yanks and Giants in Lead, After Crucial Series with St. Louis,” Evening Public Ledger (Philadelphia), July 29, 1922: 14.

19 “Pop’s Palaver,” Fort Worth Record, October 30, 1922: 6.

20 “Welcome to Our City, Fellers: Glad to Meetcha,” Salt Lake Tribune, April 11, 1923: 12.

21 The Salt Lake Tribune, among other West Coast newspapers, had credited Leslie with 75 doubles and Sheehan with 70 as late as October 1923, before a postseason reconciliation of the box scores corrected the errors. See “Another Season of Coast League Baseball Comes to a Close; Bees Finish Fifth,” Salt Lake Tribune, October 14, 1923: 17.

22 “Expect Leslie to Slug,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 27, 1923: 30.

23 “Leslie Suffers Broken Bone, Falls Headlong into Dugout,” Salt Lake Tribune, May 14, 1925: 14.

24 See Bill O’Neal, The Pacific Coast League, 1903-1988 (Austin, Texas: Eakin Press, 1990), 45.

25 “Roy Leslie Leading Fielding First Baseman in P.C.L.,” San Francisco Examiner, December 26, 1926: 71.

26 Bob Ray, “Angel Regulars Report to Skipper Marty Krug,” Los Angeles Times, February 21, 1927: S1.

27 “Roy Leslie Figures in Meyers Deal,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 25, 1927: 11.

28 “Oilers Down Mexia,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, May 20, 1928: 19.

29 Don Legg, “Sports Situation,”, May 17, 1929: 17.

30 Leroy Menzing, “This Morning’s Fare for Fans,” Fort Worth Star Telegram, May 7, 1935: 10.

31 “Roy R. Leslie Services to be Held Tuesday,” Bonham (Texas) Daily Favorite, April 10, 1972: 6.